How much was lost in the Harvest Keeper hack?

The Harvest Keeper hack resulted in $930K in losses on March 17, 2023.

What attack technique was used in the Harvest Keeper exploit?

The Harvest Keeper exploit utilized Rugpull. 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.

Harvest Keeper Hack

TOTAL LOST $930K

Low Mar 17, 2023 Rugpull

Affected Chain 2023 Incident surface

Recovered - No recovery reported

All-Time Rank #855 By amount stolen

Auditors 1 Prior security audit

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

Harvest Keeper was rugpulled via privileged function. 929,595 $USD were stolen in total across three chains.

Details of the Exploit

Harvest Keeper claimed to be an AI-powered trading platform running on Binance, Ethereum, and Polygon chains. The platform was rugpulled by the contract owner via the privileged function getAmount(). The function allowed the contract owner to drain all remaining $USDT from the project's contract.

710,595 $USDT was siphoned out in a single transaction this way. 219,000 $USD worth of assets were stolen via ice phishing and then exploiting user approvals across Binance, Ethereum, and Polygon chains in addition. All the stolen funds were transferred through multiple EOA addresses.

Block Data Reference

Attacker addresses:

https://bscscan.com/address/0x027c83d2…95ade8

https://bscscan.com/address/0x250ce5a8…710c14

Malicious transaction:

https://bscscan.com/tx/0x3c9e53a9…a8809b

Approval exploits transaction example:

https://bscscan.com/tx/0x12f1def8…896f7a

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Harvest Keeper

Date of Incident March 17, 2023

Attack Technique Rugpull

Classification Yield Aggregator

Primary Source View Post-Mortem #1 View Post-Mortem #2

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exit Scam/Rugpull

Official Website harvest-keeper.app/

Protocol Twitter/X @harvest_keeper

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 Harvest Keeper's contract logic - root cause: yield aggregator

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

Audited by ContractWolf — still lost $930K. Prior audits don't guarantee safety, especially after post-audit code changes.

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Harvest Keeper, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (March 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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Security Audit History

ContractWolf 2023-02-01 Report

Sources & References

01
Source 1 https://beincrypto.com/ai-harvest-keeper-dapp-rugpulls-draining-…
02
Source 2 https://twitter.com/CertiKAlert/status/1637470777355165696

Threat Assessment

Severity Level

LOW

Attack Vector Rugpull
Root Cause Yield Aggregator
Year 2023

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