How much was lost in the LV Finance hack?

The LV Finance hack resulted in $334K in losses on September 19, 2020.

What attack technique was used in the LV Finance exploit?

The LV Finance 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.

LV Finance Hack

TOTAL LOST $334K

Low Sep 19, 2020 Rugpull ethereum

Affected Chain ethereum Incident surface

Recovered - No recovery reported

All-Time Rank #1119 By amount stolen

Protocol Type Staking Pool Target category

Incident Overview

The core staking smart contracts were backdoored with the addReward() function. The following contracts accepted deposits from users in different tokens:

https://etherscan.io/address/0x80c09d3c…59a494#code

https://etherscan.io/address/0x9e1d0964…75deb7#code

https://etherscan.io/address/0x7b63771f…c39f80#code

https://etherscan.io/address/0xa2a430ce…d6f27d#code

https://etherscan.io/address/0xb7b3ab63…dd2f3e#code

https://etherscan.io/address/0x828995b4…5f7a27#code

https://etherscan.io/address/0x5a529c3a…72bc6c#code

https://etherscan.io/address/0xd76e4470…02f7f1#code

https://etherscan.io/address/0xbca5fc48…89ca06#code

https://etherscan.io/address/0xc3dc2d24…7b903f#code

https://etherscan.io/address/0xe52dfd3d…2a3e14#code

https://etherscan.io/address/0x478e26cb…d28c02#code

In the example below, the external address refers to each smart contract by invoking addReward() function and withdrawing user's deposits:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xa5b92bb9…f03325

In total, 201.5K USDC, 79.6K USDT, 8.1 LEND, 2.7K SUSHI, 816 UNI, 1K LINK, 1.3 SNX, 261 YFV, 0.02 YFI, 82.1 PYLON and 0.76 YFII were stolen and exchanged on ETH.

Incident Report

Protocol / Project LV Finance

Date of Incident September 19, 2020

Affected Chain(s) ethereum

Attack Technique Rugpull

Classification Yield Aggregator

Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Staking Pool

Affected Token LV

Official Website lsp.finance

Protocol Twitter/X @LSP_Fi

Team Anonymous

Source Code Unverified

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories

BNB Chain Ecosystem

Protocol Links

GitHub Discord

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 ethereum smart contracts and deploy a custom exploit contract

Protocol Analysis Identification of the exploitable vulnerability in LV Finance's contract logic - root cause: yield aggregator

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 LV Finance, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (September 2020).

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://t.me/defiyield_ann/69

Threat Assessment

Severity Level

LOW

Attack Vector Rugpull
Root Cause Yield Aggregator
Year 2020

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