Pinecone Finance Hack

TOTAL LOST $200K
Low Other

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2021 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #1294 By amount stolen
Auditors 1 Prior security audit

Incident Overview

The attackers' addresses:

https://bscscan.com/address/0x472a2c88…9be255

https://bscscan.com/address/0x430ad7e1…8a4c7e

https://bscscan.com/address/0xfc6682db…770494

The transaction behind the attack:

https://bscscan.com/tx/0xe23ffa07…6d4da1

The root cause is a false deposit bug in the staking logic of Pinecone finance. In particular, the affected vault counts as valid deposits even no tokens are actually transferred in. The hacker has no sufficient PCT balance but stakes 200K PCTs to the vault. However, the tx still succeeds and credits the hacker with 200K valid PCTs staked:

https://bscscan.com/tx/0x10236426…fa2619

Overall, three hackers gathered 3.5 million PCTs, which were converted into 516.83 BNB (~$200,000).

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Pinecone Finance
Date of Incident
Attack Technique Other
Classification Borrowing and Lending
Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type CDP
Affected Token PCT
Official Website pinecone.finance/
Protocol Twitter/X @PineconeFinance
Team Anonymous
Source Code Unverified

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories
BNB Chain 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 other 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 Pinecone Finance's contract logic - root cause: borrowing and lending
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 Other audit checklist and test coverage
Audited by Beosin — still lost $200K. Prior audits don't guarantee safety, especially after post-audit code changes.

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

  • Verify all logic paths related to Other 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

Sources & References

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