How much was lost in the Florence Finance hack?

The Florence Finance hack resulted in $1.5M in losses on November 30, 2023.

What attack technique was used in the Florence Finance exploit?

The Florence Finance exploit utilized Address Poisoning / Phishing. Understanding this attack vector is critical for smart contract auditors and developers building secure DeFi protocols.

How can developers prevent similar smart contract attacks?

Preventing smart contract hacks requires a combination of secure coding practices, thorough security audits, and understanding common attack vectors like reentrancy, oracle manipulation, and access control flaws. Smart Contract Hacking (SCH) provides hands-on training to help developers and auditors identify and prevent vulnerabilities before deployment.

Florence Finance Hack

TOTAL LOST $1.5M

Medium Nov 30, 2023 Address Poisoning / Phishing ethereum

Affected Chain ethereum Incident surface

Recovered - No recovery reported

All-Time Rank #744 By amount stolen

Auditors 1 Prior security audit

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

FlorenceFinance exit scammed via phishing attack and address poisoning, resulting in a loss of 1,456,162 USD.

Details of the Exploit

Florence Finance, a lending protocol on the Ethereum chain, suffered a phishing attack through address poisoning on Nov 28, 2023. The attacker created a wallet address that closely mimicked a legitimate address, exploiting human error to steal approximately 1,450,000 USDC. After the incident, the hackers converted the funds to Ethereum (ETH) and transferred them to THORChain.

Florence Finance has not made an official statement regarding the incident on their Twitter account.

Block Data Reference

Victim Address:

https://etherscan.io/address/0xb087cfa7…7f5870

Scammer Addresses:

https://etherscan.io/address/0xb087269d…675870

https://etherscan.io/address/0x88E22f0F…DbC1E8

Malicious Transaction:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x67a7a5f2…37fed8

Fake Token Transfers:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x02bc1f12…6c6d60

THORChain Deposit Transaction:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x2cb15e14…5ebd82

This is classified as a Phishing Attacks . Compare similar hacks →

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Florence Finance

Date of Incident November 30, 2023

Affected Chain(s) ethereum

Attack Technique Address Poisoning / Phishing

Classification Infrastructure / Borrowing and Lending

Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type RWA Lending

Smart Contract Language Solidity

Official Website florence.finance/

Protocol Twitter/X @FinanceFlorence

Team Anonymous

Source Code Unverified

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories

DeFi Privacy Zero Knowledge Proofs Staking DApp Ethereum Ecosystem Governance Lending & Borrowing

Protocol Links

GitHub Telegram

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 address poisoning / phishing and Solidity and EVM internals

Capital Required Seed capital to cover gas and initial position setup

On-Chain Access Ability to interact with ethereum smart contracts and deploy a custom exploit contract

Protocol Analysis Identification of the exploitable vulnerability in Florence Finance's contract logic - root cause: infrastructure / borrowing and lending

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 Address Poisoning / Phishing audit checklist and test coverage

Audited by Audit Report 1 — still lost $1.5M. Prior audits don't guarantee safety, especially after post-audit code changes.

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Florence Finance, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (November 2023).

Verify all logic paths related to Address Poisoning / Phishing are guarded by proper access controls and input validation - see the Phishing 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

Master these auditing techniques with hands-on labs and real exploit scenarios in the Smart Contract Hacking course.

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Security Audit History

Audit Report 1 Report

Related Attack Classes

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

See all Phishing Attacks examples →

Phishing Attacks

Sources & References

01
Source 1 https://twitter.com/PeckShieldAlert/status/1730045158509727968
02
Reference https://twitter.com/DeDotFiSecurity/status/1730062017434726539

Threat Assessment

Severity Level

MEDIUM

Attack Vector Address Poisoning / Phishing
Root Cause Infrastructure / Borrowing and Lending
Year 2023

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