Incident Overview
QuickSwap exchange was exploited through a flash loan attack. The hacker managed to transfer 190,000 $USD using TornadoCash.
QuickSwap is a DEX running on the Polygon chain. The hacker used the deployed smart contract with unverified source code to perform a flash loan attack. AAVE and Balancer platforms were used to loan 43,000,000 $USD worth of $MATIC and to manipulate an assets price on the pool.
QuickSwap tweeted, mentioning that only the MarketXYZ lending platform's contracts were affected, cause of the Curve Oracle. The hacker made a profit of 190,000 $USD after paying the flash loans and bridged the funds to the Ethereum chain and consequently to the TornadoCash.
Attacker address:
https://polygonscan.com/address/0x4206d623…d181a0
Malicious contract:
https://polygonscan.com/address/0xeb4c67e5…81e4eb
Malicious transaction:
https://polygonscan.com/tx/0xb8efe839…387558
Bridge transaction:
https://polygonscan.com/tx/0x771018d8…c8dc1b
Incident Report
Protocol Information
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 QuickSwap, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (October 2022).
- Verify all logic paths related to Flash Loan Attack are guarded by proper access controls and input validation - see the Flash Loans 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 TrialRelated Attack Classes
The technique used in this hack maps to these vulnerability classes in our security curriculum:
Sources & References
Learn to Prevent the Next QuickSwap
The QuickSwap 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.