MetaMoonMars Hack

TOTAL LOST $866
Low Other

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2021 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #2019 By amount stolen
Protocol Type Exit Scam/Other Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

MetaMoonMars token was exit scammed via Withdrawal Fee issue. The token deployer used a privileged function to set a huge fee multiplier

Details of the Exploit

MetaMoonMars is a BEP20 token trading on PancakeSwap. The contract of the token contained privileged function aprove() which sets a fee multiplier. At first, the fee was 8 percent, and after some period the function was called again, setting a fee of 99 percent.

Users were not able to buy a fair amount of tokens, and their funds were transferred into the pool.

Cause

of the huge fee, users couldn't sell the little amount of $M3 token they receive. The scammer profited for 866 $USD.

Block Data Reference

Attacker address:

https://bscscan.com/address/0xda7e1666…a17c96

Malicious transactions:

https://bscscan.com/tx/0x93a82872…6fdcc0

https://bscscan.com/tx/0xe4095741…dc78d7

Tokens transfer transaction:

https://bscscan.com/tx/0x77c2be94…3ce378

Incident Report

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

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exit Scam/Other
Affected Token M3
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 MetaMoonMars'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 MetaMoonMars, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (November 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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