Mortal Kombat Rug Pull

Reported loss Not disclosed
BNB Chain
Rugpull

What happened

MORTAL KOMBAT (MK) is a BNB Chain token deployed on 6 May 2021 at 0x26a1c344…d5e91d by 0x271a36B0…c7ce44, which is still its owner. Next to the normal transfer, the contract has an owner-only transferOwner that moves tokens with unchecked arithmetic. The contract is compiled with Solidity 0.5.16, which does not revert on underflow, so the owner can send any amount, even more than they hold, and the recipient is credited in full.

This works as a hidden, unlimited mint: totalSupply still reports 1,500,000 MK while the owner can create tokens to sell into the market. De.Fi's REKT database lists MK as an exit scam; no transaction showing transferOwner being used was found.

How it happened

  1. The constructor mints the full 1,500,000 MK (9 decimals) to the deployer and there is no public mint function, so the supply looks fixed.
  2. transferOwner(address recipient, uint256 amount) is onlyOwner and calls _transferOwner, which updates balances with plain operators: _balances[sender] -= amount; and _balances[recipient] += amount;. The normal _transfer uses SafeMath.sub and would revert on an insufficient balance; this path does not.
  3. Under Solidity 0.5.16, if amount exceeds the owner's balance, the subtraction wraps around to a number close to 2^256 instead of failing. The recipient gets the full amount, and the owner is left with an effectively unlimited balance.
  4. _totalSupply is never updated, so totalSupply() keeps showing 1,500,000 MK and explorers show no mint event, only a Transfer from the owner.
  5. With that balance the owner can sell MK into any liquidity pool for its paired asset. renounceOwnership exists, but the owner is still the deployer, so the function remains available.

Protocol details

Classification NFT
Protocol Type Exit Scam/Rugpull
Affected asset / contract MK
Protocol links Website

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