Phantom Galaxies Hack

TOTAL LOST $1.1M
Medium Malware ethereum
Affected Chain ethereum Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #967 By amount stolen
Year 2021 Incident year

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Phantom Galaxies
Date of Incident
Affected Chain(s) ethereum
Attack Technique Malware
Classification Social Engineering

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 malware and Solidity and EVM internals
Capital Required Seed capital to cover gas and initial position setup
On-Chain Access Ability to interact with ethereum smart contracts and deploy a custom exploit contract
Protocol Analysis Identification of the exploitable vulnerability in Phantom Galaxies's contract logic - root cause: social engineering
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 Malware audit checklist and test coverage

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Phantom Galaxies, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (November 2021).

  • Verify all logic paths related to Malware are guarded by proper access controls and input validation - see the Phishing 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.

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Related Attack Classes

The technique used in this hack maps to these vulnerability classes in our security curriculum:

See all Phishing Attacks examples →

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