MixedSwapRouter Hack

TOTAL LOST $16K
Low Arbitrary External Call arbitrum
Affected Chain arbitrum Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #2334 By amount stolen
Year 2024 Incident year

Incident Report

Protocol / Project MixedSwapRouter
Date of Incident
Affected Chain(s) arbitrum
Attack Technique Arbitrary External Call
Classification Access Control

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 arbitrary external call and Solidity and EVM internals
Capital Required Seed capital to cover gas and initial position setup
On-Chain Access Ability to interact with arbitrum smart contracts and deploy a custom exploit contract
Protocol Analysis Identification of the exploitable vulnerability in MixedSwapRouter's contract logic - root cause: access control
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 Arbitrary External Call audit checklist and test coverage

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to MixedSwapRouter, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (May 2024).

  • Verify all logic paths related to Arbitrary External Call are guarded by proper access controls and input validation - see the Access Control 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:

See all Access Control Attacks examples →

Learn to Prevent the Next MixedSwapRouter

The MixedSwapRouter hack is one of many attacks that skilled auditors are trained to detect before deployment. Master real exploit patterns and defense techniques with hands-on Web3 security training.

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