Incident Overview
The project's admin account on Discord was compromised. The attacker posted a phishing link on the server, which led to the fake NFT minting website. The compromised account deleted admin roles from the project team, so no one could prevent this immediately.
As a result, users spent approx 73 ETH which were stolen by this address:
https://etherscan.io/address/0x67542f6e…02fce1
After, the Discord server ownership was regained by the team.
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 Rare Bears, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (March 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.
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 Rare Bears
The Rare Bears 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.