How much was lost in the King Tribe hack?

The King Tribe hack resulted in $997K in losses on November 06, 2022.

What attack technique was used in the King Tribe exploit?

The King Tribe 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.

King Tribe Hack

TOTAL LOST $997K

Low Nov 06, 2022 Rugpull

Affected Chain 2022 Incident surface

Recovered - No recovery reported

All-Time Rank #845 By amount stolen

Protocol Type Exit Scam/Rugpull Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

King Tribe was rugpulled by the token deployer-related EOA addresses. The total drained amount reached 997,086 $USD.

Details of the Exploit

KingTribe is NFT and a BEP20 token on the Binance chain. The $KTB token price dropped by more than 95% after several EOA addresses drained the liquidity from the PancakeSwap pool. The scammers received $KTB tokens from the token deployer.

All the stolen amount was collected to a certain EOA address which sent the funds to an address labeled "mexc.com". The total stolen amount reached 997,086 $USD and the last transfer happened on November 18.

Block Data Reference

Scammer addresses:

https://bscscan.com/address/0x2015ca29…fd202d

https://bscscan.com/address/0xca13add7…a4cbce

https://bscscan.com/address/0x87b89a7e…2ba72d

https://bscscan.com/address/0x9b629e1a…b798ff

Address collected the funds:

https://bscscan.com/address/0x36e39ce8…a2814b

Final destination address:

https://bscscan.com/address/0x4982085c…6e89cb

Token distribution transactions:

https://bscscan.com/tx/0x9f45aa5e…242863

https://bscscan.com/tx/0x0999d3b1…619fe2

https://bscscan.com/tx/0x87762d7b…70b342

Incident Report

Protocol / Project King Tribe

Date of Incident November 06, 2022

Attack Technique Rugpull

Classification Token,NFT

Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exit Scam/Rugpull

Affected Token KTB

Official Website adia.ac/entry?code=PRYE6H

Protocol Twitter/X @KingTribe_Defi

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 King Tribe's contract logic - root cause: token,nft

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 King Tribe, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (November 2022).

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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Sources & References

01
Source 1 https://twitter.com/CertiKAlert/status/1590681540501024768

Threat Assessment

Severity Level

LOW

Attack Vector Rugpull
Root Cause Token,NFT
Year 2022

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