Mad Meerkat Finance Hack
Incident Overview
On May 4, 2022, the front-end of the MM Finance protocol was hacked, which allowed the hacker to change the router address and redirect all the funds of users who somehow interacted with the protocol through the front-end to their wallet.
The exploit lasted approximately three hours, then the team turned off the front-end.
Team members advised users on Discord not to interact with the site.
Attacker address: https://cronoscan.com/address/0xb3065fe2…db9a6b
Attacker fundings address: https://cronoscan.com/address/0x3fbaf5ee…eee7e3. Then they were mapped to: https://crypto.org/explorer/account/cro1ukvuw3qzjtt8wg5hsze4f2c3c8xqvtwgcnxah2. Actual fundings transaction: https://crypto.org/explorer/tx/0C7193F9E2D8FAE789A4B21DBC554D942329A5DA8734541563F339867740527B. This fundings were mapped the 0x address to the underlying address: https://crypto-org-chain.github.io/cronos-address-webtool/
600+ transactions were redirected, and the profits were exchanged for USDT and transferred through the bridge back to ETH before being deposited (743 ETH so far) in Tornado Cash.
Total number of losses: $2M
Incident Report
Protocol Information
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.
What Auditors Should Check
If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Mad Meerkat Finance, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (May 2022).
- 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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