Hope Lend Hack

TOTAL LOST $835K
Low Other

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2023 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #871 By amount stolen
Protocol Type Lending Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

Hope Lend lending protocol was exploited via a front run attack, resulting in a loss of 834,616 USD worth 528 ETH.

Details of the Exploit

Hope Lend is a DeFi Lending Protocol running on the Ethereum chain. On October 18, 2023, the protocol experienced a front run attack. The attacker attempted to exploit the protocol by taking advantage of a WBTC decimals and rounding issue.

However, they were frontrunned by an MEV bot. Half of the stolen funds were sent to the Block Producer as a bribe, while the other half was transferred to another EOA and then deposited into a MultiSigWallet by the MEV bot. The total loss amounted to 834,616 USD worth 528 ETH.

Block Data Reference

Attacker Address:

https://etherscan.io/address/0xa8bbb374…24145b

Original Attacker:

https://etherscan.io/address/0x1f23eb80…0be56f

Funds Holder as of Oct 26, 2023:

https://etherscan.io/address/0x1343d353…3164ef

Malicious Transaction:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x1a7ee0a7…d10392

Block Producer:

https://etherscan.io/address/0xce0babc8…910748

Malicious Contract Address:

https://etherscan.io/address/0xc74b72bb…9f0bb4

Incident Report

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

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Lending
Affected Token HOPE
Official Website hope.money/
Protocol Twitter/X @Hope_money_
Team Anonymous
Source Code Unverified

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories
DeFi Lending & Borrowing Hyperliquid Ecosystem
Protocol Links
GitHub 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 Hope Lend's contract logic - root cause: other
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 Hope Lend, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (October 2023).

  • 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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Sources & References

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