Narwhal Hack

TOTAL LOST $1.6M
Medium Other

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2024 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #727 By amount stolen
Protocol Type Exploit/Other Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

NRW token on Pancake Swap exploited, resulting in a loss of 1,563,286 USD.

Details of the Exploit

NRW is a BEP-20 token trading on Pancake Swap. On Jan 5-6, 2024, the token's contract was exploited in two transactions. It is suspected that the signer's private key was compromised or the information was forged.

The attacker called the withdraw() function and passed in the signer info. The stolen funds were transferred to other EOAs and contracts, and later withdrawn through Stargate Finance.Total loss was 1,563,286 USD.It is suspected,that it was an unintentional exploit.

Block Data Reference

Attacker Addresses:

https://bscscan.com/address/0x9481b7c8…FFcC30

https://bscscan.com/address/0xEa55BAEF…50E568

Malicious Transactions:

https://bscscan.com/tx/0xdae78f80…11eb2a

https://bscscan.com/tx/0x3d0cd7be…eadd9c

Token Creator Address:

https://bscscan.com/address/0x6eAC0885…435bb7

Incident Report

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

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exploit/Other
Affected Token NRW
Official Website unmarshal.io/
Protocol Twitter/X @Narwhal_fyi
Team Anonymous
Source Code Verified On-Chain

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories
AI & Big Data DeFi Ethereum Ecosystem Polkastarter Polygon Ecosystem BNB Chain Ecosystem DWF Labs Portfolio
Protocol Links
GitHub

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 Narwhal'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? Likely — with a thorough Other audit checklist and test coverage

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

  • 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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Sources & References

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