MEV Bot Hack

TOTAL LOST $2.0M
Medium Other

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2023 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #671 By amount stolen
Protocol Type Exploit/Other Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

Unknown MEV bot exploited, causing a $2 million loss due to multiple large swaps in Curve pools.

Details of the Exploit

On November 7, 2023, an unknown MEV bot was exploited, resulting in a loss of $1,974,350 USD worth 1,047.16 WETH. The MEV bot, designed to monitor the Ethereum blockchain and identify profitable opportunities, made multiple large swaps in Curve pools. These activities created arbitrage opportunities through simple reverse swaps.

The stolen funds are currently remaining at the attacker's original address as WETH.

Block Data Reference

Attacker Address:

https://etherscan.io/address/0x46d9B3dF…38F5a2

Malicious Transaction:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xbc08860c…287a38

Incident Report

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

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exploit/Other
Team Anonymous
Source Code Unverified

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 MEV Bot's contract logic - root cause: other
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 MEV Bot, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (November 2023).

  • 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

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