Incident Overview
The $Shell token was rugpulled by the token creator. The token creator took away approximately $180k in profit.
$Shell is the in-game utility token of the NFT-Game Meta Apes.
The account with minter privileges minted 150M $SHELL token to scammer address (C) in this transaction: https://bscscan.com/tx/0x2a4bb4fc…8f6a4d
Scammer address (C) transferred the received 150M token to scammer address (D): https://bscscan.com/tx/0x264bbb37…069a5b
Then scammer address (D) proceeded to dump 60 million $SHELL token on PancakeSwap in a series of transactions for a total profit of $180k.
Here is an example of transactions:
1) https://bscscan.com/tx/0x1ea7a643…81c242
2) https://bscscan.com/tx/0x7ff107c2…34af6f
3) https://bscscan.com/tx/0x24740d89…1b5f81
Then all the receive funds were transferred to the Binance Hot Wallet 6 along this chain of transactions:
1) https://bscscan.com/tx/0xaf9dd345…620182
2) https://bscscan.com/tx/0x75ff7128…eeca59
As the time of this writing information on this case is scarce. More sources will be added if the case should develop.
Token creator, scammer address (A): https://bscscan.com/address/0x1b9dfc56…03911c
Token minter, scammer address (B): https://bscscan.com/address/0xd10c833f…8104ca
Scammer address (C): https://bscscan.com/address/0xd699576b…56edf7
Scammer Address (D): https://bscscan.com/address/0x5ba8c3f5…e2cfb2
Incident Report
Protocol Information
Market Context at Time of Hack
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 Meta Apes, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (June 2022).
- 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
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