HTX Hack

TOTAL LOST $21.9M
High Access Control

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2023 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #217 By amount stolen
Protocol Type CEX Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

HTX exchange suffered a 21,854,944 USD loss due to an access control exploit, compromising hot wallets and leading to malicious funds transfers.

Details of the Exploit

HTX, formerly known as Huobi, is a global cryptocurrency exchange that experienced an access control exploit on November 22, 2023. The attacker gained unauthorized access to several of HTX's hot wallets and transferred funds to multiple addresses. The stolen funds, which included various tokens such as USDT, USDC, LINK, and ARIX, were exchanged for ETH and distributed among different addresses.

The total loss amounted to 21,854,944 USD.

Block Data Reference

Attacker Addresses:

https://etherscan.io/address/0x5A22F867…5515dC

https://etherscan.io/address/0x121A0Ff2…7945cc

Malicious Transactions:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xd773f61d…edbeda

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xae118977…c3af17

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x526d2a00…f66106

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x0bb70d29…623503

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xa117dc4a…6d5a8d

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xa3feab38…8c4e1a

Funds Holders as of Nov 27, 2023:

https://etherscan.io/address/0x7Ae277EC…26b949

https://etherscan.io/address/0x6CC330b8…211c6b

https://etherscan.io/address/0x12FC2841…c5b231

https://etherscan.io/address/0x5DdF1A1d…97d920

https://etherscan.io/address/0x5e552A4f…30d119

This is classified as a Access Control Attacks . Compare similar hacks →

Incident Report

Protocol / Project HTX
Date of Incident
Attack Technique Access Control
Classification CeFi
Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type CEX
Affected Token HT
Official Website www.htx.com/en-us/
Protocol Twitter/X @HTX_Global
Team Public / Doxxed
Source Code Unverified

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories
Centralized Exchange (CEX) Token Ethereum Ecosystem TRON Ecosystem BNB Chain Ecosystem Tron20 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 Operational-security tradecraft (phishing, malware, leaked seed phrases, or insider access) to obtain treasury signing authority
Capital Required Minimal capital - only enough to cover gas while draining the compromised accounts
On-Chain Access Valid signing authority over the compromised wallets / multisig signers, allowing direct transfer of funds or stake authorization
Target Reconnaissance Identification of HTX's high-value treasury accounts and the authority / multisig structure controlling them
Execution Speed Speed to drain the compromised accounts before the team detects the breach and revokes signing authority or freezes the assets
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 Access Control audit checklist and test coverage

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

  • Verify all logic paths related to Access Control are guarded by proper access controls and input validation - see the Access Control Attacks attack class for patterns
  • 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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Related Attack Classes

The technique used in this hack maps to these vulnerability classes in our security curriculum:

See all Access Control Attacks examples →

Access Control Attacks

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