How much was lost in the Ninja Gaiden hack?

The Ninja Gaiden hack resulted in $89K in losses on October 02, 2023.

What attack technique was used in the Ninja Gaiden exploit?

The Ninja Gaiden 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.

Ninja Gaiden Hack

TOTAL LOST $89K

Low Oct 02, 2023 Rugpull

Affected Chain 2023 Incident surface

Recovered - No recovery reported

All-Time Rank #1570 By amount stolen

Protocol Type Exit Scam/Rugpull Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

GAIDEN token exit scammed via rugpull with deployer removing 133,171 USD worth of liquidity from UniSwap pool.

Details of the Exploit

GAIDEN is an ERC20 token trading on UniSwap. On Oct 02, 2023, the deployer removed 83,14 WETH, which equates to roughly 133,171 USD, from the liquidity pool. The stolen funds were transferred to another EOA address, partially withdrawn through Tornado Cash, and the remaining amount was distributed among multiple addresses.

Block Data Reference

Deployer Address:

https://etherscan.io/address/0x8d9ea28f…EA0010

Scammer Addresses:

https://etherscan.io/address/0xB8B1387C…ee216B

https://etherscan.io/address/0x9fE7c1db…031250

Liquidity Removal Transaction:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x76865cd3…15d9b7

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Ninja Gaiden

Date of Incident October 02, 2023

Attack Technique Rugpull

Classification Token

Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exit Scam/Rugpull

Affected Token GAIDEN

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 Ninja Gaiden'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 Ninja Gaiden, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (October 2023).

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://twitter.com/CyversAlerts/status/1709134563455209507

Threat Assessment

Severity Level

LOW

Attack Vector Rugpull
Root Cause Token
Year 2023

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