Incident Overview
On April 19, 2023, an attacker hacked the Ocean Life token on Binance Smart Chain (BSC), using a flawed mechanism to lower the token supply and manipulate the price. The attacker earned 32 WBNB in return for their actions.
The attacker used a flash loan of 969 WBNB from DPPOracle and converted it to OLIFE tokens using PancakeSwap. By internally calling the '_reflectFee' function through the transfer function, the attacker decreased the total value of _tTotal. However, the balance of the pool was much higher after accumulation, as computed using balanceOf(), and the hacker used a direct call to swap to withdraw $WBNB from the pool.
The attacker then returned the 969 WBNB flashloan and transferred the 32 WBNB profit to another address.
Attacker's transaction:
https://bscscan.com/tx/0xa21692ff…caab0a
Attacker address:
https://bscscan.com/address/0xfb8ef8de…dd41b7
Stolen funds address:
https://bscscan.com/address/0x662D2dC4…F0726B
Incident Report
Protocol Information
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 OceanLifeToken, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (April 2023).
- 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
Learn to Prevent the Next OceanLifeToken
The OceanLifeToken hack is one of many attacks that skilled auditors are trained to detect before deployment. Master real exploit patterns and defense techniques with hands-on Web3 security training.