How much was lost in the Mina Protocol hack?

The Mina Protocol hack resulted in $106K in losses on October 25, 2023.

What attack technique was used in the Mina Protocol exploit?

The Mina Protocol exploit utilized Rugpull. Understanding this attack vector is critical for smart contract auditors and developers building secure DeFi protocols.

How can developers prevent similar smart contract attacks?

Preventing smart contract hacks requires a combination of secure coding practices, thorough security audits, and understanding common attack vectors like reentrancy, oracle manipulation, and access control flaws. Smart Contract Hacking (SCH) provides hands-on training to help developers and auditors identify and prevent vulnerabilities before deployment.

Mina Protocol Hack

TOTAL LOST $106K

Low Oct 25, 2023 Rugpull

Affected Chain 2023 Incident surface

Recovered - No recovery reported

All-Time Rank #1512 By amount stolen

Auditors 1 Prior security audit

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

MINA token experienced an exit scam on Oct 25, 2023, with scammers rugpulling and stealing 106,395 USD worth of funds from PancakeSwap liquidity pool.

Details of the Exploit

MINA is a BEP20 token trading on PancakeSwap. The deployer renounced ownership after creating the token, possibly to facilitate a future hack. A scammer minted a significantly larger number of tokens and then rug pulled by selling 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 MINA, completely depleting the liquidity pool.

The scammers sent the stolen funds in separate parts through several addresses to the Binance wallet, resulting in a total loss of 106,395 USD worth 474.25 WBNB.

Block Data Reference

Deployer Address:

https://bscscan.com/address/0x1EC5a461…76f7F6

Scammer Addresses:

https://bscscan.com/address/0x0920baB9…2da44A

https://bscscan.com/address/0xFcCe0c3B…8FD2d4

https://bscscan.com/address/0xD74C92e4…D3db21

https://bscscan.com/address/0x4797DfaC…3217e9

https://bscscan.com/address/0xDe97Fd46…25a048

Liquidity Removal Transaction:

https://bscscan.com/tx/0xb799b3db…061abd

Sending Stolen Funds to Binance Wallet Transaction:

https://bscscan.com/tx/0x47d2b4f0…4152cb

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Mina Protocol

Date of Incident October 25, 2023

Attack Technique Rugpull

Classification Token

Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type CDP

Affected Token MINA

Official Website moria.money

Protocol Twitter/X @MoriaMoney

Team Anonymous

Source Code Verified On-Chain

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories

Marketing Platform Mobile Web3 BNB Chain Ecosystem Binance Alpha Binance Alpha Airdrops Binance Ecosystem

Protocol Links

GitHub Discord

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 rugpull 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 Mina Protocol'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? Hard to catch — private key / OpSec failures are outside smart contract audit scope

Audited by Audit Report 1 — still lost $106K. Prior audits don't guarantee safety, especially after post-audit code changes.

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Mina Protocol, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (October 2023).

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

Master these auditing techniques with hands-on labs and real exploit scenarios in the Smart Contract Hacking course.

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Security Audit History

Audit Report 1 Report

Sources & References

01
Source 1 https://twitter.com/PeckShieldAlert/status/1717060576705237010

Threat Assessment

Severity Level

LOW

Attack Vector Rugpull
Root Cause Token
Year 2023

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