ETERBASE Hack

TOTAL LOST $5.4M
Medium Access Control

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2020 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #415 By amount stolen
Auditors 1 Prior security audit

Incident Overview

ETERBASE hot wallets were compromised, stolen funds were moved to the following addresses:

ETH Address: 0x7860F7b2…781aD9

TRX Address: TPdhhbCHqXzrDyUiQnHApS7VL2UxB8Qhna

XTZ Address: tz1hnoxVgc8Z1DUa6D18EUkPCXmNbaHwmLRc

BTC Address: 1ANLZZ2YFGumRXaD3EMii92zWQgvX2CK9c

ALGO Address: PDVFO5SDJMOJ6MC7KAD27DDGQ5YQD4IUTDJR2QRCPENT5A5T6CGT2VAAEI

XRP Address: rNwgkFj6QadEXUyS1jgTD2XEsi8HanKzDX

Stolen funds were withdrawn to centralized exchanges wallets of Binance, Huobi, HitBTC. "Due to the fact that Eterbase has lost several important partners and financial providers, we are unfortunately forced to stop temporarily all our operations beginning April 19th 2021. Please, withdraw all your funds immediately.EBASE claims will be converted to EUR claims." - ETERBASE stated on April 8:

https://twitter.com/ETERBASE/status/1380191015915679750

This is classified as a Access Control Attacks . Compare similar hacks →

Incident Report

Protocol / Project ETERBASE
Date of Incident
Attack Technique Access Control
Classification CeFi
Primary Source View Post-Mortem #1 View Post-Mortem #2 View Post-Mortem #3

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Derivatives
Official Website www.eterbase.com/
Protocol Twitter/X @ETERBASE
Team Anonymous
Source Code Unverified

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories
Ethereum Ecosystem
Protocol Links
GitHub Reddit

What the Attacker Needed to Succeed

Understanding the prerequisites for this type of attack helps auditors identify protocols that are most at risk and helps developers build better defenses.

Technical Knowledge Operational-security tradecraft (phishing, malware, leaked seed phrases, or insider access) to obtain treasury signing authority
Capital Required Minimal capital - only enough to cover gas while draining the compromised accounts
On-Chain Access Valid signing authority over the compromised wallets / multisig signers, allowing direct transfer of funds or stake authorization
Target Reconnaissance Identification of ETERBASE's high-value treasury accounts and the authority / multisig structure controlling them
Execution Speed Speed to drain the compromised accounts before the team detects the breach and revokes signing authority or freezes the assets
Obfuscation Plan A strategy to launder and move stolen funds - typically through mixers, cross-chain bridges, or decentralized DEX swaps to resist tracing

What Auditors Should Check

Could this have been caught in audit? Likely — with a thorough Access Control audit checklist and test coverage
Audited by Audit Report 1 — still lost $5.4M. Prior audits don't guarantee safety, especially after post-audit code changes.

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to ETERBASE, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (September 2020).

  • Verify all logic paths related to Access Control are guarded by proper access controls and input validation - see the Access Control Attacks attack class for patterns
  • Review privileged functions (owner, admin, governance) for potential abuse vectors - centralization risks should be documented and bounded with timelocks or multi-sigs

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Security Audit History

Related Attack Classes

The technique used in this hack maps to these vulnerability classes in our security curriculum:

See all Access Control Attacks examples →

Access Control Attacks

Sources & References

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