LW Hack

TOTAL LOST $49K
Low Other

Summarize with AI

Affected Chain 2023 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #1722 By amount stolen
Protocol Type Exploit/Other Target category

Incident Overview

LW token's URoter contract was exploited leading to a loss of 49,300 $USD.

LW is a BEP20 token trading on PancakeSwap. The project's URoter contract was exploited which resulted in a loss of 49,300 $USD. The attacker took out a flash loan worth 1,000,000 $USD and used it to exploit logic flaws in the URoter contract by deploying their own malicious smart contract that drained funds.

Once they had successfully stolen the funds, they repaid their flash loan and made off with their profits. In total, 150 $BNB was transferred through TornadoCash for anonymity purposes.

Attacker address:

https://bscscan.com/address/0x4404de29…7973e5

Malicious transaction:

https://bscscan.com/tx/0xb846f3ae…5e4e4a

Funds transfer example transaction:

https://bscscan.com/tx/0x46171312…2d3a97

Malicious Contract:

https://bscscan.com/address/a4fbc2c95ac4240277313bf3f810c54309dfcd6c

Incident Report

Protocol / Project LW
Date of Incident
Attack Technique Other
Classification Token
Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exploit/Other
Affected Token LW
Team Anonymous
Source Code Verified On-Chain

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 LW'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

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to LW, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (May 2023).

  • 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

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Sources & References

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