LAURA Hack

TOTAL LOST $48K
Low Other

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2025 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #1727 By amount stolen
Auditors 1 Prior security audit

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

On Jan 8, 2025, the LAURA token contract was exploited for around $48,000 due to a flawed removeLiquidityWhenKIncreases function.

Details of the Exploit

The hacker first swapped significant WETH for LAURA and contributed LAURA and WETH liquidity to the Uniswap pool, raising the constant product (x * y = k). They then invoked the contract’s removeLiquidityWhenKIncreases() function, which failed to correctly handle the heightened K and thus allowed the attacker to remove more tokens than they deposited. Finally, the attacker traded back into WETH once the pool was misaligned, walking away with a net profit of approximately $48,000.

Block Data Reference

Exploit tx:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xef34f4fd…dbf420

Incident Report

Protocol / Project LAURA
Date of Incident
Attack Technique Other
Classification Token
Primary Source View Post-Mortem #1 View Post-Mortem #2

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Yield
Official Website aura.finance
Protocol Twitter/X @aurafinance
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 LAURA's contract logic - root cause: token
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
Audited by Audit Report 1 — still lost $48K. Prior audits don't guarantee safety, especially after post-audit code changes.

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

  • 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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Security Audit History

Sources & References

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