How much was lost in the RETAWATCH hack?

The RETAWATCH hack resulted in $29K in losses on July 13, 2022.

What attack technique was used in the RETAWATCH exploit?

The RETAWATCH 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.

RETAWATCH Hack

TOTAL LOST $29K

Low Jul 13, 2022 Rugpull

Affected Chain 2022 Incident surface

Recovered - No recovery reported

All-Time Rank #1835 By amount stolen

Protocol Type Exit Scam/Rugpull Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

The $RTW token has been rugpulled by the contract creator. The contract creator sent 15M $RTW to the scammer address (B) who created a liquidity pool between $BNB and $BUSD. When the price of the token appreciated, the scammer took profits.

Details of the Exploit

The contract creator deployed the contract to the network and verified its source code. Then he sent 15M $RTW tokens to scammer address (B), which created a liquidity pool between tokens such as $BNB and $BUSD. In total, the value of the pool was approximately $16.8K.

Liquidity creation with $BUSD: https://bscscan.com/tx/0x1b7df886…d351b9

Liquidity creations with $BNB: https://bscscan.com/tx/0xab1311a6…4c516b

After the pool was created, the deployer began distributing tokens between accounts artificially created by the team that took up this project to create a fake distribution of tokens between accounts, here is an example addresses:

1) https://bscscan.com/address/0xf04fc8f7…0007c4

2) https://bscscan.com/address/0x1232ca2e…f9929e

3) https://bscscan.com/address/0xfccd8eff…b95dfe

Scammer address (B) removed the liquidity several times, taking profit, of $3.7K.

Remove liquidity transactions:

1) https://bscscan.com/tx/0x219bae11…693543

2) https://bscscan.com/tx/0x9c0b9854…9700df

3) https://bscscan.com/tx/0x1132159c…b2edad

The contract creator then sent 20M tokens to scammer address (C) in this transaction:

https://bscscan.com/tx/0x1f61d921…20bb76

The tokens received by scammer address(C) were exchanged for 96.5 $BNB via PancakeSwap:

https://bscscan.com/address/0xd18e87e3…38322a

Then 25 $BNB was sent to scammer address (D) in this transaction:

https://bscscan.com/tx/0x7bdcb62b…291711

Scammer addresses (E) and (F) swapped tokens for BUSD:

Scammer address (E) transaction: https://bscscan.com/tx/0x78f78503…893fd9

Scammer address (F) transaction: https://bscscan.com/tx/0xf7b329e7…d68337

Block Data Reference

Scammer account addresses:

1) https://bscscan.com/address/0x94ba9057…3f5a5a

2) https://bscscan.com/address/0xd18e87e3…38322a

3) https://bscscan.com/address/0xc39e6417…120d75

4) https://bscscan.com/address/0xf5d2e7d1…a653ef

5) https://bscscan.com/address/0xbf0b5acc…395dcb

6) https://bscscan.com/address/0x829d2235…be5f1f

Contract creation transaction: https://bscscan.com/tx/0x84abb3f0…969709

Incident Report

Protocol / Project RETAWATCH

Date of Incident July 13, 2022

Attack Technique Rugpull

Classification Other

Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exit Scam/Rugpull

Affected Token RTW

Protocol Twitter/X @retawatchcoin

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 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 RETAWATCH's contract logic - root cause: other

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 RETAWATCH, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (July 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://dexscreener.com/bsc/0xf393d2ad897a616c64aeb0d39df67682f7a5dcc2

Threat Assessment

Severity Level

LOW

Attack Vector Rugpull
Root Cause Other
Year 2022

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