Incident Overview
Nimbus DAO protocol was exploited via FlashLoan attack. The attacker stole worth around $76,000 USD.
The flashloan was used for the price oracle manipulation and the NIMB/NBU_WBNB pool was affected. Exploit led to the unfair reward distribution in getReward() function.
In case, of computation of the token reward is proportional to the ratio of $NIMB and $GNIMB in the pool, the ratio of Nimbus Utility tokens to Nimbus Governance tokens was broken. To repay the flash loan, the exploiter exchanged $GNIMB for $BNB.
Attacker address:
https://bscscan.com/address/0x86aa1c46…95b597
Malicious transactions:
https://bscscan.com/tx/0x42f56d3e…90f6c1
https://phalcon.blocksec.com/tx/bsc/0x42f56d3e…90f6c1
Incident Report
Protocol Information
Market Context at Time of Hack
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.
What Auditors Should Check
If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Nimbus DAO, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (December 2022).
- Verify all logic paths related to Flash Loan Attack are guarded by proper access controls and input validation - see the Flash Loans 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.
Free TrialRelated Attack Classes
The technique used in this hack maps to these vulnerability classes in our security curriculum:
Sources & References
- 01
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02
Web Archive https://archive.ph/oINkp
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