OlympusDAO Hack

TOTAL LOST $315K
Low Other

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2022 Incident surface
Recovered $315K 100.0% returned
All-Time Rank #1130 By amount stolen
Auditors 1 Prior security audit

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

OlympusDAO exploited by WhiteHat for 315,328 $USD via logic issue of the Bond Protocol contracts

Details of the Exploit

OlympusDAO is a DAO backed by $OHM tokens and running on the Ethereum chain. The Bond Protocol contract, which hold 315,328 $USD worth of $OHM tokens were siphoned out by the WhiteHat hacker. BondFixedExpiryTeller contract had no additional security check, which allowed the attacker to drain the assets. All the stolen amount were returned by the hacker to OlympusDAO Funds

contract.

Block Data Reference

Attacker address:

https://etherscan.io/address/0x443cf223…c7d9be

Malicious transaction:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x3ed75df8…1504cf

Returning transaction:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xdca75841…f6205f

Malicious contract:

https://etherscan.io/address/0xa29e4fe4…a4de8f

Incident Report

Protocol / Project OlympusDAO
Date of Incident
Attack Technique Other
Classification Yield Aggregator
Primary Source View Post-Mortem #1 View Post-Mortem #2

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Reserve Currency
Affected Token OHM
Official Website www.olympusdao.finance/
Protocol Twitter/X @OlympusDAO
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 other 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 OlympusDAO's contract logic - root cause: yield aggregator
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? Likely — with a thorough Other audit checklist and test coverage
Audited by Audit Report 1 — still lost $315K. Prior audits don't guarantee safety, especially after post-audit code changes.

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to OlympusDAO, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (October 2022).

  • 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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Funds Recovery

100.0%

Recovered

$315K

Net Loss

0

Security Audit History

Sources & References

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