Ethereum Hive Hack
Incident Overview
EthereumHive project exploited, resulting in the loss of 744 million EHIVE tokens worth 15,569 USD (9.32 ETH).
EthereumHive, a project running on the Ethereum chain, was exploited on August 21, 2023, through a reentrancy attack. The attacker used a rewarding issue in the EHIVE token's smart contract which allowed stakes with zero amount. They created multiple contracts and staked 0 EHIVE tokens from each of them.
By calling stake and unstake immediately in each contract, the attacker increased reward amounts, ultimately minting 744 million EHIVE tokens. These tokens were exchanged for over 9 ETH, equivalent to 15,569 USD. The stolen funds were deposited into TornadoCash.
Attacker Address:
https://etherscan.io/address/0x0195448a…234bb5
Malicious Transactions:
https://etherscan.io/tx/0xad818ec9…a511c1
https://etherscan.io/tx/0xd9156f50…642114
Malicious Contract Addresses:
https://etherscan.io/address/0x98C2e1E8…80B892
https://etherscan.io/address/0xE7d9a935…6Dcb84
TornadoCash Deposit Transaction:
https://etherscan.io/tx/0x61bfbd48…af185d
Incident Report
Protocol Information
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.
What Auditors Should Check
If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Ethereum Hive, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (August 2023).
- Verify all logic paths related to Other are guarded by proper access controls and input validation
- Review privileged functions (owner, admin, governance) for potential abuse vectors - centralization risks should be documented and bounded with timelocks or multi-sigs
Master these auditing techniques with hands-on labs and real exploit scenarios in the Smart Contract Hacking course.
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