KyberSwap Classic Hack

TOTAL LOST $265K
Low Cloudflare Key Compromised polygon

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain polygon Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #1190 By amount stolen
Auditors 1 Prior security audit

Incident Overview

KyberSwap is both a decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator and a liquidity source with capital-efficient liquidity pools that earns fees for liquidity providers

Incident Report

Protocol / Project KyberSwap Classic
Date of Incident
Affected Chain(s) polygon
Attack Technique Cloudflare Key Compromised
Classification Infrastructure
Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Dexs
Official Website kyberswap.com/#/swap
Protocol Twitter/X @KyberNetwork

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories
Cosmos Ecosystem Store Of Value DeFi Payments Ethereum Ecosystem Coinbase Ventures Portfolio YZi Labs Portfolio Avalanche Ecosystem
Protocol Links
GitHub Reddit

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 KyberSwap Classic'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 Cloudflare Key Compromised audit checklist and test coverage
Audited by Audit Report 1 — still lost $265K. Prior audits don't guarantee safety, especially after post-audit code changes.

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to KyberSwap Classic, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (September 2022).

  • Verify all logic paths related to Cloudflare Key Compromised 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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Security Audit History

Sources & References

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