Incident Overview
Purse.io users were the target of hackers who may have gained access and compromised a third-party email service provider used by the company.
The first signs of the theft came to light after a user took to Reddit to report unauthorized withdrawals from the user’s Purse.io wallet:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3o9ju8/my_purseio_account_was_compromised/
The attack flow:
- users received an email asking for their account passwords to be changed
- soon after, the targeted users also received a withdrawal request (after the compromise of the password)
- moments later, a withdrawal confirmation came along, confirming the theft.
The company stated that 11 users were affected and 10.235 bitcoins were withdrawn without users’ consent. Purse.io confirmed that the compromised users have been reimbursed, and their accounts have since been secured.
Incident Report
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.
What Auditors Should Check
If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Purse, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (October 2015).
- Verify all logic paths related to Access Control are guarded by proper access controls and input validation - see the Access Control 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 TrialFunds Recovery
Recovered
$2.5M
Net Loss
0
Related Attack Classes
The technique used in this hack maps to these vulnerability classes in our security curriculum:
Sources & References
Learn to Prevent the Next Purse
The Purse 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.