How much was lost in the Ranger hack?

The Ranger hack resulted in $100K in losses on November 15, 2022.

What attack technique was used in the Ranger exploit?

The Ranger 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.

Ranger Hack

TOTAL LOST $100K

Low Nov 15, 2022 Rugpull

Affected Chain 2022 Incident surface

Recovered - No recovery reported

All-Time Rank #1525 By amount stolen

Protocol Type Exit Scam/Rugpull Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

The Ranger project was rugged by the token deployer with a profit about 100,000 $USD.

Details of the Exploit

The Ranger project fell victim to a scam. The token deployer sent Ranger tokens to various addresses after the PancakeSwap Pool USDT/Ranger had been drained.

Block Data Reference

Deployer:

https://bscscan.com/address/0x888ec45f…5659ef

Drained LP:

https://bscscan.com/address/0x66af2232…0a2c30#tokentxns

Sales:

https://explorer.bitquery.io/bsc/txs/transfers?from=2022-11-01&till=2022-11-30

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Ranger

Date of Incident November 15, 2022

Attack Technique Rugpull

Classification Token

Primary Source View Post-Mortem #1 View Post-Mortem #2 View Post-Mortem #3

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exit Scam/Rugpull

Affected Token Ranger

Official Website www.orangecrypto.com/

Protocol Twitter/X @orangecryptoX

Team Anonymous

Source Code Unverified

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories

DeFi Bitcoin Ecosystem BRC-20 Ordinals - BRC20 Ecosystem

Protocol Links

GitHub

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 smart contracts and deploy a custom exploit contract

Protocol Analysis Identification of the exploitable vulnerability in Ranger's contract logic - root cause: token

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 Ranger, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (November 2022).

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://quillaudits.medium.com/over-20-million-was-lost-to-rug-p…
02
Web Archive https://archive.ph/wip/f1yph

Threat Assessment

Severity Level

LOW

Attack Vector Rugpull
Root Cause Token
Year 2022

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