Fire Token Hack

TOTAL LOST $24K
Low Other

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2024 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #1868 By amount stolen
Protocol Type CDP Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

On October 1, 2024, the FireToken smart contract was exploited within 24 seconds of its launch, leading to an attacker profiting around $24,000. The vulnerability lay in its token-burning mechanism, which allowed manipulation of the Uniswap liquidity pool's balance.

Details of the Exploit

The root cause of the exploit stemmed from the FireToken contract's implementation of a token-burning mechanism during transfers. The contract's _transfer() function removed a portion of FireTokens from the circulating supply and sent them to a burn address, reducing the liquidity pool's token reserves. Each time a transfer occurred, the function immediately called sync() to update the Uniswap pool's reserves.

This setup allowed the attacker to reduce FireToken reserves while keeping the ETH reserves constant. By decreasing FireToken reserves, the attacker created a price discrepancy in line with Uniswap’s constant product formula (x * y = k), making ETH appear more valuable relative to the dwindling FireTokens.

Block Data Reference

Exploit tx:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xd20b3b31…76ff2b

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Fire Token
Date of Incident
Attack Technique Other
Classification Token
Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type CDP
Affected Token FIRE
Official Website firetoken.ca/
Protocol Twitter/X @Fire_TokenEth
Team Anonymous
Source Code Unverified

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 Deep understanding of other and Solidity and EVM internals
Capital Required Seed capital to cover gas and initial position setup
On-Chain Access Ability to interact with smart contracts and deploy a custom exploit contract
Protocol Analysis Identification of the exploitable vulnerability in Fire Token's contract logic - root cause: token
Execution Speed Precise transaction ordering and timing to exploit the vulnerability within a single atomic block
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 Other audit checklist and test coverage

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Fire Token, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (October 2024).

  • 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

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