How much was lost in the One For The Books hack?

The One For The Books hack resulted in $46K in losses on August 02, 2023.

What attack technique was used in the One For The Books exploit?

The One For The Books 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.

One For The Books Hack

TOTAL LOST $46K

Low Aug 02, 2023 Rugpull

Affected Chain 2023 Incident surface

Recovered - No recovery reported

All-Time Rank #1735 By amount stolen

Protocol Type Exit Scam/Rugpull Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

One For The Books token was rugpulled by the deployer, removing liquidity worth 46,150 $USD from the UniSwap pool.

Details of the Exploit

One For The Books (BOOKS) is an ERC20 token trading on UniSwap. On August 2, the deployer removed 25 $ETH as liquidity from the LP pool, constituting a rugpull. The stolen funds were transferred to another EOA address and remained at that address as of August 4.

The total loss in this exit scam is 46,150 $USD.

Block Data Reference

Deployer Address:

https://etherscan.io/address/0x51902B0A…08B4Ed

Scammer Address:

https://etherscan.io/address/0x72070ebe…f30238

Liquidity Removal Transactions:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x7146d2f7…26b772

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x1c72c348…4e25d3

Incident Report

Protocol / Project One For The Books

Date of Incident August 02, 2023

Attack Technique Rugpull

Classification Token

Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exit Scam/Rugpull

Affected Token BOOKS

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 One For The Books'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 One For The Books, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (August 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/artemDeDotFi/status/1686931305001254912?s=20

Threat Assessment

Severity Level

LOW

Attack Vector Rugpull
Root Cause Token
Year 2023

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