pNetwork Hack

TOTAL LOST $12.7M
High Other

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2021 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #279 By amount stolen
Auditors 1 Prior security audit

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

pBTC-on-BSC cross-chain bridge was exploited, resulting in the theft of 277 BTC.

Details of the Exploit

The attacker targeted multiple pTokens bridges, but only the pBTC-on-BSC cross-chain bridge was affected. The attacker was funded with BNB from a Binance exchange wallet to cover gas fees for the deployment of contracts with malicious logic. These smart contracts created a series of event logs, including both legitimate and faulty peg-out requests.

Due to a bug in the Rust code section responsible for extracting these log events, both types of logs were extracted and incorrectly processed, leading to the exploit. As a result, 277 BTC were stolen from the pBTC-on-BSC collateral.

Block Data Reference

Attacker Address:

https://bscscan.com/address/0x2bf5693d…42c934

First Exploit Transaction:

https://bscscan.com/tx/0x0eb55e02…a2a551

Funding Transaction from Binance:

https://bscscan.com/tx/0x23db0ee2…7bbd88

BTC Addresses of the Attacker:

https://pastebin.com/raw/bAquZVws

Incident Report

Protocol / Project pNetwork
Date of Incident
Attack Technique Other
Classification Bridge
Primary Source View Post-Mortem #1 View Post-Mortem #2 View Post-Mortem #3

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Bridge
Affected Token PNT
Official Website p.network/
Protocol Twitter/X @pNetworkDeFi
Team Anonymous
Source Code Unverified

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories
Collectibles & NFTs BNB Chain Ecosystem
Protocol Links
GitHub Reddit

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 pNetwork's contract logic - root cause: bridge
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 Audit Report 1 — still lost $12.7M. Prior audits don't guarantee safety, especially after post-audit code changes.

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to pNetwork, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (September 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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