How much was lost in the Levyathan hack?

The Levyathan hack resulted in $1.5M in losses on July 30, 2021.

What attack technique was used in the Levyathan exploit?

The Levyathan exploit utilized Private Key Compromised (Stored Publicly) / Other. 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.

Levyathan Hack

TOTAL LOST $1.5M

Medium Jul 30, 2021 Private Key Compromised (Stored Publicly) / Other binance bsc

Affected Chain binance 2 chains affected

Recovered - No recovery reported

All-Time Rank #712 By amount stolen

Auditors 1 Prior security audit

Incident Overview

The Levyathan developers left the private keys to a wallet with minting capability available on Github.

The attacker's address:

https://bscscan.com/address/0x7507f846…9265d3

The minting transaction:

https://bscscan.com/tx/0x86ddfd98…d2135e

The attacker sold tokens at:

https://bscscan.com/tx/0xe3faf5bf…068230

https://bscscan.com/tx/0x06498e85…ddca3f

At this moment the attacker gained ~$122,957

The rest of the tokens were burnt:

https://bscscan.com/tx/0x28934740…5710b0

The attacker exchanged his gains onto ETH at:

https://bscscan.com/tx/0xfba3cd60…87bf2e

https://bscscan.com/tx/0x692d4a6a…ebf3a8

ETH were bridged from BSC to Ethereum Mainnet:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x7643893e…949166

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x6ee8444d…32877b

Stolen ETH were deposited onto the Tornado Cash mixer at:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x50a243cf…a0fcca

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xffbabbe3…d53c3f

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xcd715f01…b4f9cb

TVL of the project was $1.5 million, so the total losses are estimated at the same amount.

This is classified as a Access Control Attacks . Compare similar hacks →

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Levyathan

Date of Incident July 30, 2021

Affected Chain(s) binance bsc

Attack Technique Private Key Compromised (Stored Publicly) / Other

Classification Infrastructure / Other

Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exploit/Other

Affected Token LEV

Smart Contract Language Solidity

Official Website www.levyathan.finance/

Protocol Twitter/X @Levyathan_index

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories

Mineable

Protocol Links

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 Levyathan'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? Hard to catch — private key / OpSec failures are outside smart contract audit scope

Audited by Certik — still lost $1.5M. Prior audits don't guarantee safety, especially after post-audit code changes.

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

Verify all logic paths related to Private Key Compromised (Stored Publicly) / Other are guarded by proper access controls and input validation - see the Access Control Attacks attack class for patterns
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

Certik 2021-05-25 Report

Related Attack Classes

The technique used in this hack maps to these vulnerability classes in our security curriculum:

See all Access Control Attacks examples →

Access Control Attacks

Proof-of-Concept Exploits

1 PoC available

poc-exploits - levyathan

$ Levyathan Finance (I) Lost keys and minting (II) Vulnerable emergencyWithdraw

On-Chain Evidence & References

Post-Mortem https://levyathan-index.medium.com/post-mortem-levyathan-c3ff7f9a6f65

Sources & References

01
Source 1 https://rekt.news/levyathan-rekt/
02
Web Archive https://web.archive.org/web/20210621172232/https://www.levyathan…
03
Reference https://levyathan-index.medium.com/post-mortem-levyathan-c3ff7f9a6f65

Threat Assessment

Severity Level

MEDIUM

Attack Vector Private Key Compromised (Stored Publicly) / Other
Root Cause Infrastructure / Other
Year 2021

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