Genius Token Hack

TOTAL LOST $1.2M
Medium Other

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2024 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #796 By amount stolen
Protocol Type Exit Scam/Other Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

The Genius token team executed a partial exit scam on May 5th, 2024, making a profit of approximately $1.2 million USD.

Details of the Exploit

The original GNUS Token deployer 0x1804dE was funded on the Fantom chain by another scam wallet 0x548c63 initiated a function deployTokenManager on the InterchainProxy contract which is one of the core Axelar Network contracts. This function deployed a new token manager with a fake token 0xC77522 registered as a bridged token.

Simultaneously, another address, 0x548c63, deployed and minted 100,000,000 fake tokens, 0xC77522, on the Fantom network.

Subsequently, 500,000 of the fake tokens were bridged via Axelar to the Ethereum network and sold on the Uniswap DEX for 407 ETH.

The profits were then mixed and sent to various addresses.

Block Data Reference

GNUS Token Deployer:

https://etherscan.io/address/0x1804deca…a8b463

Fake token manager:

https://ftmscan.com/address/0x8c10c286…b575C6#code

Fantom fake token:

https://ftmscan.com/address/0xC77522dC…027d17

Bridging to Ethereum mainnet:

https://ftmscan.com/tx/0x9fe599bf…c12ec6

Ethereum mainnet sell:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xe8a5780c…85a407

Two scammer addresses are linked to the transaction: https://ftmscan.com/tx/0xae046acc…1c9ac9

Incident Report

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

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exit Scam/Other
Affected Token GNUS
Official Website www.gnus.ai/
Protocol Twitter/X @GnusAi
Team Anonymous
Source Code Unverified

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories
Solana Ecosystem
Protocol Links
Discord

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 Genius 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 Genius Token, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (May 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

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

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