Incident Overview
On October 16, 2024, Radiant Capital, a decentralized finance (DeFi) lending protocol, was exploited in a major cyberattack, resulting in over $50 million in losses.
On October 16, 2024, Radiant Capital, a decentralized finance (DeFi) lending protocol, was exploited in a major cyberattack, resulting in over $50 million in losses. Attackers gained access to three out of 11 private keys needed to control Radiant's smart contracts, allowing them to drain funds across multiple blockchains. The breach impacted liquidity pools on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) and Arbitrum networks, forcing Radiant to suspend its markets on Ethereum and Base as part of its damage control efforts.
The attackers compromised Radiant’s multi-signature wallet, which requires multiple key holders to approve critical actions. By obtaining three private keys, they gained sufficient control to upgrade the protocol’s smart contracts and initiate unauthorized transfers of assets. Hackers drained liquidity pools holding popular tokens like USDC, WBTC, WETH, and BNB. Notably, $18 million was stolen from Radiant's BSC pools, and additional funds were compromised on Arbitrum. In response, Radiant partnered with security firms, including SEAL911 and Chainalysis, to investigate and urged users to revoke smart contract permissions.
Exploiter:
https://arbiscan.io/address/0x0629b104…f98962
https://bscscan.com/address/0x911215cf…b7ac95
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 Radiant Capital, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (October 2024).
- 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 TrialSecurity Audit History
- Audit Report 1 Report
Related Attack Classes
The technique used in this hack maps to these vulnerability classes in our security curriculum:
Sources & References
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