How much was lost in the Pump Farm hack?

The Pump Farm hack resulted in $478K in losses on November 12, 2020.

What attack technique was used in the Pump Farm exploit?

The Pump Farm 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.

Pump Farm Hack

TOTAL LOST $478K

Low Nov 12, 2020 Rugpull ethereum

Affected Chain ethereum Incident surface

Recovered - No recovery reported

All-Time Rank #1022 By amount stolen

Protocol Type Exit Scam/Rugpull Target category

Incident Overview

The contract deployer interacted with the 3rd party malicious unverified smart contract that received infinite approval for spending the user's approved tokens. He invoked the setMigrator() function at the following transaction:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xcacef01f…b30864

This contract called migrate() function multiple times. Example transaction:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x88e788af…42c164

Migrated LP tokens were removed from the liquidity pool at:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xeb99cfe7…5d3bfe

In addition, the contract deployer has minted 10q PPF tokens onto his wallet:

https://etherscan.Io/tx/0xa7ca31db…699d77

After, 1 billion PPF tokens were exchanged for 220.60 WETH:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x6d455a00…02c483

Stolen funds were deposited to the Tornado Cash at these 8 transactions to cover up the tracks:

https://etherscan.io/address/0x0ef1a03c…fe1eaa

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Pump Farm

Date of Incident November 12, 2020

Affected Chain(s) ethereum

Attack Technique Rugpull

Classification Yield Aggregator

Primary Source View Post-Mortem #1 View Post-Mortem #2

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exit Scam/Rugpull

Affected Token PPF

Official Website www.pump.farm/

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 ethereum smart contracts and deploy a custom exploit contract

Protocol Analysis Identification of the exploitable vulnerability in Pump Farm's contract logic - root cause: yield aggregator

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 Pump Farm, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (November 2020).

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://archive.ph/5LVnC
02
Source 2 https://archive.ph/iAAAi
03
Web Archive https://archive.ph/5LVnC https://archive.ph/iAAAi

Threat Assessment

Severity Level

LOW

Attack Vector Rugpull
Root Cause Yield Aggregator
Year 2020

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