Huge Gas Fee Draining Hack

TOTAL LOST $156K
Low Other

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2023 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #1383 By amount stolen
Protocol Type Exploit/Other Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

Ethereum user loses 121 ETH in gas fee exploit, totaling a loss of 156,190 USD.

Details of the Exploit

On October 19, 2022, an Ethereum user fell victim to a gas draining exploit, losing 121 ETH as a gas fee. The fees were pocketed by the validator that processed the transaction, which was processed by an MEV-Boost relay belonging to Flashbots, the most prominent organization within the MEV sphere. The transaction used a block-builder from builder0x69.

It remains unclear which, if any, of the parties involved is responsible for manipulating the gas fee to such heights.

Block Data Reference

Victim Address:

https://etherscan.io/address/0xBB1D6b3B…2b73Fd

Malicious Transaction:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x4a84d087…ca4e97

Malicious Contract Address:

https://etherscan.io/address/0x6465fa41…112865

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Huge Gas Fee Draining
Date of Incident
Attack Technique Other
Classification Other
Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exploit/Other
Team Anonymous
Source Code Unverified

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 Huge Gas Fee Draining'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 Huge Gas Fee Draining, 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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