Mozaic Hack

TOTAL LOST $2.1M
Medium Access Control

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2024 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #619 By amount stolen
Protocol Type Yield Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

Mar-15-2024 Mozaic Finance was hacked on Arbitrum, leading to a loss of approximately $2.1 million.

Details of the Exploit

Mozaic_Fi's breach stemmed from compromised access controls within the Arbitrum network. Vaults were drained for about $2.1M in USDT tokens. Subsequently, the stolen funds were funneled to @MEXC_Official.

Block Data Reference

Attacker:

https://arbiscan.io/address/0xd6d4e803…f7c52b

Exploit tx:

https://arbiscan.io/tx/0xed6c1386…0f588b

https://arbiscan.io/tx/0x96045356…989a02

https://arbiscan.io/tx/0x98097fee…bed7c5

https://arbiscan.io/tx/0xf509a32a…c8a8cb

https://arbiscan.io/tx/0x52b78eec…d726f4

This is classified as a Access Control Attacks . Compare similar hacks →

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Mozaic
Date of Incident
Attack Technique Access Control
Classification Yield Aggregator
Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Yield
Official Website mozaic.finance/
Protocol Twitter/X @Mozaic_Fi
Team Anonymous
Source Code Unverified

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories
AI & Big Data Arbitrum Ecosystem Generative AI Base Ecosystem DeFAI
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 Operational-security tradecraft (phishing, malware, leaked seed phrases, or insider access) to obtain treasury signing authority
Capital Required Minimal capital - only enough to cover gas while draining the compromised accounts
On-Chain Access Valid signing authority over the compromised wallets / multisig signers, allowing direct transfer of funds or stake authorization
Target Reconnaissance Identification of Mozaic's high-value treasury accounts and the authority / multisig structure controlling them
Execution Speed Speed to drain the compromised accounts before the team detects the breach and revokes signing authority or freezes the assets
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 Access Control audit checklist and test coverage

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

  • Verify all logic paths related to Access Control 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 →

Access Control Attacks

Sources & References

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Learn to Prevent the Next Mozaic

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