Incident Overview
Gladiator, an ERC20 token trading on UniSwap, was exploited by the deployer in an exit scam. The total loss amounts to 246,180 $USD or 132.91 ETH.
The attack on the Gladiator project was carried out by the deployer, who removed liquidity from the LP pool. Following the removal, the stolen funds were transferred through various EOA addresses, possibly to obfuscate the trail of the stolen assets. The lack of further details on fund distribution may suggest the ongoing concealment of stolen funds.
Deployer Address:
https://etherscan.io/address/0xfD98A561…B2F5fE
Funds Holder as of Aug 14, 2023:
https://etherscan.io/address/0xa88a470f…4a5032
Liquidity Removal Transaction:
https://etherscan.io/tx/0x8cee548d…9eda87
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 Gladiator, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (August 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
Master these auditing techniques with hands-on labs and real exploit scenarios in the Smart Contract Hacking course.
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