Polynomial Protocol Hack

TOTAL LOST $7K
Low Other

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2022 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #1963 By amount stolen
Protocol Type Exploit/Other Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

The attacker could drain USDC balances of user addresses that approved their tokens to be spent by the PolynomialZap contract.

Details of the Exploit

The swapAndDeposit() function of the PolynomialZap contract contains a bug: there are no limitations for two input parameters - swapTarget and swapData. This allows anyone to abuse the function and steal tokens approved to the contact.

All tokens that are approved to the vulnerable contract are still in danger.

Block Data Reference

The vulnerable contract:

https://optimistic.etherscan.io/address/0xB162f01C…D77c82#code

The attack contract:

https://optimistic.etherscan.io/address/0xf682e302…4e29a8#code

Incident Report

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

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exploit/Other
Affected Token -
Official Website www.polynomial.fi/
Protocol Twitter/X @https://mobile.twitter.com/PolynomialFi
Team Public / Doxxed
Source Code Verified On-Chain

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 Polynomial Protocol'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 Other audit checklist and test coverage

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Polynomial Protocol, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (November 2022).

  • 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

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