Meebits Hack

TOTAL LOST $700K
Low Other

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2021 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #920 By amount stolen
Protocol Type Exploit/Other Target category

Incident Overview

The exploiter's address:

https://etherscan.io/address/0x009988ff…74933e

The exploiter's smart contract:

https://etherscan.io/address/0x270ff230…d46ffb

Affected NFT smart contract:

https://etherscan.io/address/0x7bd29408…716bc7#code

Minting function in NFT uses pseudo randomization depends on block values:

uint index = uint(keccak256(abi.encodePacked(nonce, msg.sender, block.difficulty, block.timestamp))) % totalSize.

It means close to zero randomnesses of the returned index. The exploiter has used a bot and deployed a contract to interact with the NFT contract. The exploiter used open information which exactly what metadata he should receive to sell NFT with the highest profit. If the bot minted an undervalued NFT, the bot reverted the transaction. This vulnerability allowed exploiter minting predictable expensive NFTs.

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Meebits
Date of Incident
Attack Technique Other
Classification NFT
Primary Source View Post-Mortem #1 View Post-Mortem #2

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exploit/Other
Affected Token Meebits
Official Website meebits.larvalabs.com/
Protocol Twitter/X @ebit_tokens
Team Anonymous
Source Code Unverified

Market Context at Time of Hack

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 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 Meebits's contract logic - root cause: nft
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 Meebits, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (May 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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Sources & References

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