How much was lost in the Neoteric Finance hack?

The Neoteric Finance hack resulted in $17K in losses on July 16, 2022.

What attack technique was used in the Neoteric Finance exploit?

The Neoteric Finance 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.

Neoteric Finance Hack

TOTAL LOST $17K

Low Jul 16, 2022 Rugpull

Affected Chain 2022 Incident surface

Recovered - No recovery reported

All-Time Rank #1899 By amount stolen

Protocol Type Indexes Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

The Neoteric Finance project was rug pulled by its team. The profit received from this project amounted to 67 $BNB.

Details of the Exploit

Neoteric is a mechanism for creating a meta-market with constant liquidity, which increases liquidity as more transactions are made.

The Neoteric project created a Telegram group and a Twitter account to attract users, they also have a simple website in which information about the project and the purpose of the project are written on a page. A day after the creation of the NTRC/BNB pair on PancakeSwap, they posted a post on Twitter about the successful capitalization, which attracted the attention of users.

Here is the pair creation transaction: https://bscscan.com/tx/0x574679ed…8fd93a

The token creator received 100 $BNB from the scammer address (B): https://bscscan.com/tx/0xc965f8c0…dd176b

Then, when the price appreciated, the token creator removed liquidity taking a profit of ~67 $WBNB in these two transactions:

1) https://bscscan.com/tx/0xf3a2bd56…059c1d

2) https://bscscan.com/tx/0x2add9377…1d0221

The team conducted the same scheme with the $PEECAT token.

As the time of this writing information on this case is scarce. More sources will be added if the case should develop.

Block Data Reference

Involved addresses:

Token creator, scammer address (A): https://bscscan.com/address/0x8f0d9acb…2387e4

Scammer address (B): https://bscscan.com/address/0x6e9afd53…2209b1

Transactions:

Deployment transaction: https://bscscan.com/tx/0x8b26c3e8…742c18

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Neoteric Finance

Date of Incident July 16, 2022

Attack Technique Rugpull

Classification Token

Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Indexes

Affected Token NTRC

Official Website www.neoteric.finance/

Protocol Twitter/X @neotericfinance

Team Anonymous

Source Code Verified On-Chain

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 Neoteric Finance'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

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Neoteric Finance, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (July 2022).

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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Sources & References

01
Source 1 https://isthiscoinascam.com/check/neoteric
02
Web Archive https://web.archive.org/web/20210324035121/https://neoteric.finance/

Threat Assessment

Severity Level

LOW

Attack Vector Rugpull
Root Cause Token
Year 2022

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