Incident Overview
On January 10, 2025, the FortuneWheel smart contract on Binance Smart Chain (BSC) was exploited due to a lack of access control in its swapProfitFees function. This vulnerability allowed an attacker to manipulate token prices and drain nearly $21,000 USD.
The core issue lay in the swapProfitFees function, which was designed to facilitate token swaps through PancakeSwap. However, the function lacked proper access control, allowing anyone to invoke it. The attacker exploited this flaw by first swapping a large amount of WBNB for LINK to manipulate the pool’s price.
They then called the vulnerable function to swap LINK back to WBNB, profiting from the skewed pricing. This sequence of operations enabled the attacker to extract funds from the contract and ultimately caused significant financial losses.
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 FortuneWheel, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (January 2025).
- 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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