Incident Overview
PicoStocks suffered a significant loss due to unauthorized access to their keys, leading to the defunding of both hot and cold wallets
An individual with prior access to PicoStocks' keys exploited this access to drain both the hot and cold wallets of the stock exchange. Despite the substantial loss, PicoStocks managed to cover the entire amount, ensuring that creditors were not affected by this incident
Incident Report
Protocol Information
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 PicoStocks, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (November 2013).
- Verify all logic paths related to Access Control are guarded by proper access controls and input validation - see the Access Control 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.
Free TrialFunds Recovery
Recovered
$6.4M
Net Loss
0
Related Attack Classes
The technique used in this hack maps to these vulnerability classes in our security curriculum:
Sources & References
Learn to Prevent the Next PicoStocks
The PicoStocks 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.