fren Hack

TOTAL LOST $34K
Low Rugpull

Summarize with AI

Affected Chain 2023 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #1808 By amount stolen
Protocol Type Exit Scam/Rugpull Target category

Incident Overview

FREN token was rugpulled by deployer, removing liquidity worth 33,768 USD from UniSwap pool in an exit scam.

FREN is an ERC20 token trading on UniSwap. On Jul 10, 2023, the deployer of the FREN token removed liquidity from the UniSwap pool in a single transaction, executing a rugpull exit scam. The deployer removed 18.01 WETH, which is equivalent to approximately 33,768 USD, causing a significant loss for the token holders.

Deployer Address:

https://etherscan.io/address/0x2A6d72d2…8D8Ac1

07e7af59cc2420545224f08762e9935b3c4

Liquidity Removal Transaction:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x7a043300…24cc05

Incident Report

Protocol / Project fren
Date of Incident
Attack Technique Rugpull
Classification Token

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exit Scam/Rugpull
Affected Token FREN
Team Anonymous
Source Code Verified On-Chain

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 rugpull 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 fren'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? Hard to catch — private key / OpSec failures are outside smart contract audit scope

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

  • Verify all logic paths related to Rugpull 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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Learn to Prevent the Next fren

The fren hack is one of many attacks that skilled auditors are trained to detect before deployment. Master real exploit patterns and defense techniques with hands-on Web3 security training.

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