How much was lost in the ProjectX hack?

The ProjectX hack resulted in $28K in losses on July 07, 2022.

What attack technique was used in the ProjectX exploit?

The ProjectX exploit utilized Rugpull. 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.

ProjectX Hack

TOTAL LOST $28K

Low Jul 07, 2022 Rugpull

Affected Chain 2022 Incident surface

Recovered - No recovery reported

All-Time Rank #1841 By amount stolen

Protocol Type Yield Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

ProjectX has been rugpulled by the token creator. The token creator minted 1M $PXT tokens which were distributed among several addresses that dumped the token price taking profits of ~$28K.

Details of the Exploit

ProjectX was a nodes as a service project promising passive income to its holders.

The creator of the contract, deployed the token contract into the network and minted himself 1M $PXT (https://snowtrace.io/tx/0xf9cb648f…299dd5).

Then, 1M$PXT tokens were sent to the scam address (B) in this transaction (https://snowtrace.io/tx/0x07ca8447…47ea97)

The team opened a liquidity pool on Trader Joe, where the liquidity with a profit of 584 $WAVAX was ultimately removed

(https://snowtrace.io/tx/0xc674da82…48d4b9).

At the time of this writing funds are partly located at this address (https://snowtrace.io/address/0x9c02ac14…1151fa). The scammer address (D) received 500K $PXT tokens from scammer address (C), and swapped the tokens to 911.21 $WAVAX in these two transactions:

1) https://snowtrace.io/tx/0x177a8060…756826

2) https://snowtrace.io/tx/0x283d99a5…9e7e3a

Block Data Reference

Token contract address: https://snowtrace.io/address/0x9adcbba4…14cafd

Token creator address: https://snowtrace.io/address/0x9dc72782…bf67fd

Scammer addresses:

1) https://snowtrace.io/address/0x9dc72782…bf67fd

2) https://snowtrace.io/address/0x19c7798a…ea83af

3) https://snowtrace.io/address/0xadbf6ee9…18294e

4) https://snowtrace.io/address/0x9c02ac14…1151fa

Involved address: https://snowtrace.io/address/ 0xFbB3A79B…CA3987

Incident Report

Protocol / Project ProjectX

Date of Incident July 07, 2022

Attack Technique Rugpull

Classification Other

Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Yield

Affected Token PXT

Official Website projectx.financial/

Protocol Twitter/X @projectxfinance

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 rugpull 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 ProjectX'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? Hard to catch — private key / OpSec failures are outside smart contract audit scope

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

Verify all logic paths related to Rugpull 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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Sources & References

01
Source 1 https://dexscreener.com/avalanche/0xf17a02640e399e01ee4a197ba101…
02
Web Archive https://web.archive.org/web/20220626002737/https://projectx.financial/

Threat Assessment

Severity Level

LOW

Attack Vector Rugpull
Root Cause Other
Year 2022

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