How much was lost in the Pills for Sale hack?

The Pills for Sale hack resulted in $447K in losses on January 17, 2021.

What attack technique was used in the Pills for Sale exploit?

The Pills for Sale exploit utilized Honeypot. 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.

Pills for Sale Hack

TOTAL LOST $447K

Low Jan 17, 2021 Honeypot ethereum

Affected Chain ethereum Incident surface

Recovered - No recovery reported

All-Time Rank #1046 By amount stolen

Protocol Type Exit Scam/Honeypot Target category

Incident Overview

The contract owner could disable the transfer function, which restricted users in selling their tokens.

The contract deployer added initial liquidity at:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x80464b80…0d0585

The liquidity was removed by the contract deployer at:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xbd5e38b1…3f9904

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Pills for Sale

Date of Incident January 17, 2021

Affected Chain(s) ethereum

Attack Technique Honeypot

Classification Token

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exit Scam/Honeypot

Affected Token PILLS

Official Website www.condenses.ai/

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories

AI & Big Data Bittensor Ecosystem

Protocol Links

GitHub

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 honeypot 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 Pills for Sale'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? Likely — with a thorough Honeypot audit checklist and test coverage

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

Verify all logic paths related to Honeypot 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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Threat Assessment

Severity Level

LOW

Attack Vector Honeypot
Root Cause Token
Year 2021

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