Incident Overview
On Aug. 28, a user reported that his OKEx account was logged in by a German IP and participated in BTC-ETC trading. The hacker sold all the Bitcoins and canceled all the pending orders within one hour.
Such behavior has resulted in a loss of 200 Bitcoins, which are worth more than five mln yuan.
At the same time, a few other users reported similar attacks. All victims have lost about six hundred Bitcoins in total, worth over 20 mln yuan (about three mln dollars).
Based on the current situation, OKEx has made an announcement.
OKEx claimed that the theft was performed by hackers, and it has nothing to do with the platform. The victims were directed to call the police by themselves.
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 OKEx, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (October 2017).
- Verify all logic paths related to Other 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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The OKEx 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.