Lever Hack

TOTAL LOST $653K
Low Other

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2021 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #941 By amount stolen
Auditors 1 Prior security audit

Incident Overview

The attacker:

https://bscscan.com/address/0x1bd2c354…02f76b

The transaction behind the attack:

https://bscscan.com/tx/0xb5365a29…815593

Attack contract A:

https://bscscan.com/address/0x5f92949a…a13f4e

Attack contract B:

https://bscscan.com/address/0x3790c9b5…868e1e

Steps:

- attack contract A flash loaded 2,100 BNB from PancakeSwap and deposited 2000 BNB on Lever’s BNB vault

- borrowed 1500 BNB from Lever’s BNB vault and transferred it to Lever attack contract B

- attack contract B deposited 1500 BNB and used it to drain 32.78 ETH, 1,068.05 BAKE, 167.25 XVS, 1,042.89DAI, 64,157.79 BUSD, 54,335.19USDT ,2.8806 BTC, 1,930.01CAKE, 463.0078DOT, and 332.9184 WBNB

- The total loss equals $652941.

Attack contract A used attack contract B’s 1500 xBNB (which had been collateralized to borrow other assets) to repay the 1500 dBNB it borrowed, by calling the repay() function in the MarginPool.sol contract.

The contract didn’t check the liabilities of the caller. The attack contract B was able to repay the attack contract A’s dtoken with its xtoken. The attack contract A repaid the flash loan on PancakeSwap.

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Lever
Date of Incident
Attack Technique Other
Classification Borrowing and Lending
Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Yield
Affected Token LEV
Official Website lever.network/
Protocol Twitter/X @LeverNetwork
Team Anonymous
Source Code Unverified

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories
DeFi Ethereum Ecosystem IOST Ecosystem Solana Ecosystem Arrington XRP Capital Portfolio Alameda Research Portfolio ParaFi Capital Bitcoin Ecosystem
Protocol Links
GitHub Telegram

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 Lever's contract logic - root cause: borrowing and lending
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 $653K. Prior audits don't guarantee safety, especially after post-audit code changes.

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Lever, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (November 2021).

  • 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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