How much was lost in the Ragnarok Online Invasion hack?

The Ragnarok Online Invasion hack resulted in $45K in losses on September 08, 2022.

What attack technique was used in the Ragnarok Online Invasion exploit?

The Ragnarok Online Invasion exploit utilized Access Control. 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.

Ragnarok Online Invasion Hack

TOTAL LOST $45K

Low Sep 08, 2022 Access Control

Affected Chain 2022 Incident surface

Recovered - No recovery reported

All-Time Rank #1712 By amount stolen

Protocol Type Exploit/Access control Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

Ragnarok Online Invasion was exploited due to ownership issues of the token contract

Details of the Exploit

$ROI is a BEP20 token of the Ragnarok Online Invasion project. The smart contract had a security vulnerability, that allowed any user or contract to take ownership of the token. The attacker used several smart contracts with unverified source code to utilize transferOwnership function and stole 162.56 $WBNB from the PancakeSwap liquidity pool.

Consequently, the $ROI token price dropped >98%. The total amount of 45,261 $USD worth of assets is currently located at the attacker's address.

Block Data Reference

Address of the attacker:

https://bscscan.com/address/0x91b7f203…531114

Transaction:

https://bscscan.com/tx/0x0e14cb7e…a053b0

Contracts involved in the attack:

https://bscscan.com/address/0x10752708…81bad7

https://bscscan.com/address/0x8e8c892a…a0fc0e

https://bscscan.com/address/0x158af3d2…f74ed0

https://bscscan.com/address/0x12d64a15…ff2bf3

This is classified as a Access Control Attacks . Compare similar hacks →

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Ragnarok Online Invasion

Date of Incident September 08, 2022

Attack Technique Access Control

Classification Token

Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exploit/Access control

Affected Token ROI

Team Anonymous

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 Operational-security tradecraft (phishing, malware, leaked seed phrases, or insider access) to obtain treasury signing authority

Capital Required Minimal capital - only enough to cover gas while draining the compromised accounts

On-Chain Access Valid signing authority over the compromised wallets / multisig signers, allowing direct transfer of funds or stake authorization

Target Reconnaissance Identification of Ragnarok Online Invasion's high-value treasury accounts and the authority / multisig structure controlling them

Execution Speed Speed to drain the compromised accounts before the team detects the breach and revokes signing authority or freezes the assets

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? Likely — with a thorough Access Control audit checklist and test coverage

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

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.

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Related Attack Classes

The technique used in this hack maps to these vulnerability classes in our security curriculum:

See all Access Control Attacks examples →

Access Control Attacks

Sources & References

01
Source 1 https://archive.is/lBEHm

Threat Assessment

Severity Level

LOW

Attack Vector Access Control
Root Cause Token
Year 2022

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