HyperVault Hack

TOTAL LOST $3.6M
Medium Drain Vaults / Rugpull hyperliquid l1

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain hyperliquid l1 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #510 By amount stolen
Protocol Type Yield Aggregator Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

On September 26, 2025, DeFi protocol Hypervault disappeared with approximately $3.6 million in user assets in a suspected exit scam. The project withdrew all funds from Hyperliquid, bridged them to Ethereum, converted them to ETH, and deposited 752 ETH into Tornado Cash before deleting all online presence.

Details of the Exploit

Hypervault promoted itself as a yield farming platform offering "hands-free" auto-compounding, yield farming bots, and adapters for redirecting assets into lending protocols and concentrated liquidity pools on HyperEVM. User deposits were distributed across external services to implement complex income-generating strategies. The team executed a classic rug pull by withdrawing approximately $3.6 million in user funds from the Hyperliquid platform and bridging them to the Ethereum network.

Once on Ethereum, the funds were swapped for ETH, with 752 ETH (valued at around $3 million) deposited into Tornado Cash for laundering. Following the fund withdrawal, the project's X (Twitter) account was deleted and the official website became inaccessible, confirming suspicions of an orchestrated exit scam rather than a security exploit.

Incident Report

Protocol / Project HyperVault
Date of Incident
Affected Chain(s) hyperliquid l1
Attack Technique Drain Vaults / Rugpull
Classification Rugpull / Yield Aggregator
Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Yield Aggregator
Smart Contract Language Solidity
Protocol Twitter/X @hypervaultfi
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 drain vaults / rugpull and Solidity and EVM internals
Capital Required Seed capital to cover gas and initial position setup
On-Chain Access Ability to interact with hyperliquid l1 smart contracts and deploy a custom exploit contract
Protocol Analysis Identification of the exploitable vulnerability in HyperVault's contract logic - root cause: rugpull / 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

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to HyperVault, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (September 2025).

  • Verify all logic paths related to Drain Vaults / 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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Sources & References

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These hacks used the same attack technique. Understanding the pattern helps prevent future exploits.

Dragoma $3.5M
Drain Vaults / Rugpull

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