Pickle Hack

TOTAL LOST $19.7M
High Vault Swap Exploit ethereum

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain ethereum Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #237 By amount stolen
Auditors 1 Prior security audit

Incident Overview

Pickle Finance is a yield aggregator, auto-compounding users LP positions saving them time and money. The governance token PICKLE can be staked as DILL, to earn a share of the protocols revenues and boost users farm APY

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Pickle
Date of Incident
Affected Chain(s) ethereum
Attack Technique Vault Swap Exploit
Classification Protocol Logic
Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Yield Aggregator
Smart Contract Language Solidity
Official Website pickle.finance/
Protocol Twitter/X @picklefinance

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories
Solana Ecosystem
Protocol Links

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 vault swap exploit 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 Pickle's contract logic - root cause: protocol logic
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 Vault Swap Exploit audit checklist and test coverage
Audited by Audit Report 1 — still lost $19.7M. Prior audits don't guarantee safety, especially after post-audit code changes.

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Pickle, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (November 2020).

  • Verify all logic paths related to Vault Swap Exploit 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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Security Audit History

Proof-of-Concept Exploits

1 PoC available
poc-exploits - pickle
$ Pickle Finance Insufficient validation

On-Chain Evidence & References

Sources & References

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