Meteora DAMM V2 Hack

TOTAL LOST $1.5M
Medium Impersonation Scam solana
Affected Chain solana Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #864 By amount stolen
Year 2026 Incident year

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Meteora DAMM V2
Date of Incident
Affected Chain(s) solana
Attack Technique Impersonation Scam
Classification Social Engineering

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 impersonation scam and Rust/Anchor program internals and the Solana account model
Capital Required Seed capital to cover Solana network fees and initial position setup
On-Chain Access Ability to interact with solana Solana programs and deploy a custom exploit program or signer account
Protocol Analysis Identification of the exploitable vulnerability in Meteora DAMM V2's program logic - root cause: social engineering
Execution Speed Precise transaction ordering and timing to exploit the vulnerability within a single Solana transaction (atomic across instructions)
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 Impersonation Scam audit checklist and test coverage

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Meteora DAMM V2, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (January 2026).

  • Verify all logic paths related to Impersonation Scam are guarded by proper access controls and input validation - see the Phishing Attacks attack class for patterns
  • 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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Related Attack Classes

The technique used in this hack maps to these vulnerability classes in our security curriculum:

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