How much was lost in the NWN hack?

The NWN hack resulted in $110K in losses on September 27, 2022.

What attack technique was used in the NWN exploit?

The NWN 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.

NWN Hack

TOTAL LOST $110K

Low Sep 27, 2022 Rugpull

Affected Chain 2022 Incident surface

Recovered - No recovery reported

All-Time Rank #1496 By amount stolen

Protocol Type Exit Scam/Rugpull Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

Rug pull happened on NWN token, which lead to a dump of the token price by more than 89%

Details of the Exploit

NWN is a BEP20 token. Rug pull happened after an EOA address sold 410,000 $NWN tokens on PancakeSwap and drained the huge amount of liquidity. The address received the tokens from 3 other addresses.

The total profit of the scammer reached 110,00 $USD. More than half of the drained funds were sent to another EOA address and the remaining 50,000 $BUSD are at the original address.

Block Data Reference

Scammer address:

https://bscscan.com/address/0xbb30f770…d27281

Token receive transactions:

https://bscscan.com/tx/0xe2afc14d…da6c8b

https://bscscan.com/tx/0xef7cdf81…c1015a

https://bscscan.com/tx/0xd6efd870…c8864a

Incident Report

Protocol / Project NWN

Date of Incident September 27, 2022

Attack Technique Rugpull

Classification Token

Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exit Scam/Rugpull

Affected Token NWN

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 NWN'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 NWN, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (September 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://twitter.com/CertiKAlert/status/1574887757687791626

Threat Assessment

Severity Level

LOW

Attack Vector Rugpull
Root Cause Token
Year 2022

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