Pink Drainer Hack

TOTAL LOST $3.7M
Medium Phishing

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2023 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #496 By amount stolen
Protocol Type Exploit/Phishing Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

"Pink Drainer" group orchestrates extensive phishing scams, draining approximately 3,548,566 $USD from victims.

Details of the Exploit

The group "Pink Drainer" has been connected to a series of Discord and Twitter hacking incidents, including but not limited to those involving Evomos, Pika Protocol, OpenAI CTO, and Orbiter Finance. They've distributed phishing links through hacked Discord accounts, leading to numerous users inadvertently opening malicious websites and signing fraudulent digital signatures. This has resulted in a significant loss of user assets, amounting to around 3,548,566 $USD.

Through the analysis of stolen data on various chains, it was discovered that the group has affected almost 1,932 victims. The method of hacking was mostly through carefully crafted social engineering attacks, leading to Discord token theft.

Impersonating journalists from well-known media outlets and leading victims through seemingly genuine interview processes were among their tactics. Eventually, the victims were guided to add malicious bookmarks or bots, resulting in their Discord tokens being stolen.

Block Data Reference

Attacker Addresses:

https://etherscan.io/address/0x9fA7bB75…f2C726

https://etherscan.io/address/0x7d23354d…f105b2

https://etherscan.io/address/0xa5e4b451…8f4f83

https://etherscan.io/address/0x6337f236…c7a0db

https://etherscan.io/address/0x6440e4dC…9AB41c

Malicious Transaction Example:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xab4fae9e…87f9d3

PinkDrainer Contract:

https://etherscan.io/address/0x00000f31…700000

PrinkDrainer Deployer:

https://etherscan.io/address/0xa5ae5115…887af1

PinkDrainer Wallet:

https://etherscan.io/address/0x63605e53…c44a51

Full victim list:

https://dune.com/scamsniffer/pinkdrainer-stats

This is classified as a Phishing Attacks . Compare similar hacks →

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Pink Drainer
Date of Incident
Attack Technique Phishing
Classification Other
Primary Source View Post-Mortem #1 View Post-Mortem #2

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exploit/Phishing
Team Anonymous
Source Code Unverified

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 phishing 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 Pink Drainer's contract logic - root cause: other
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 Phishing audit checklist and test coverage

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Pink Drainer, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (June 2023).

  • Verify all logic paths related to Phishing 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.

Free Trial

Post-Incident Timeline

  • 2023-07-19

    On July 19, 2023, another phishing incident in Arbitrum chain was reported, from where the relation to PinkDrainer was discovered. 613,627 $USD was stolen in $MAGIC tokens and then transferred to $ETH. Consequently, the funds were bridged to Ethereum. Attacker Address: https://arbiscan.io/address/0xcb721b27ca670c806a6aaa9ac9df6d065d24bcd5 Malicious Transaction: https://arbiscan.io/tx/0x9072952bfa441d73b36e75fde98e1e6ed6f7d58ee051cf4b5f9cd4850726d65f Relation proof: https://etherscan.io/tx/0xb73b6b7e15fe299e2e59570695e5f98bb2f28d0073960435f144896cbc669006

  • 2023-08-30

    Another victim lost 200,921 USD worth of UNIBOT tokens via ERC20 Permit Phishing. The wallet marked as PinkDrainer1 initiated a malicious transaction and transferred 390.26 and 910.61 UNIBOT tokens to two addresses respectively. Malicious Transaction: https://etherscan.io/tx/0x35842e095a0d39d17e731a52ac16e19fe17f051cea68bbe3a5945d45d5693db2 Scammer Addresses: https://etherscan.io/address/0x63605e53d422c4f1ac0e01390ac59aaf84c44a51 Funds Transferred To: https://etherscan.io/address/0x9fa7bb759641fcd37fe4ae41f725e0f653f2c726 https://etherscan.io/address/0x6e024a123535ebdb5c5741800f115a2319db1932

Related Attack Classes

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

See all Phishing Attacks examples →

Phishing Attacks

Sources & References

Browse all hacks

These hacks used the same attack technique. Understanding the pattern helps prevent future exploits.

USDC Permit Signature Phishing $1.8M
Phishing
Social Engineering Scam $282M
Phishing
Address Poisoning Attack $50.0M
Phishing
Zerobase $240K
Phishing
MUBARA $55K
Phishing
Venus $13.0M
Phishing

Learn to Prevent the Next Pink Drainer

The Pink Drainer 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.

Start Free Trial Browse Attack Library
Recreate exploit patterns safely Free Trial