How much was lost in the Rubixi hack?

The Rubixi hack resulted in $7K in losses on March 14, 2016.

What attack technique was used in the Rubixi exploit?

The Rubixi 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.

Rubixi Hack

TOTAL LOST $7K

Low Mar 14, 2016 Access Control

Affected Chain 2016 Incident surface

Recovered - No recovery reported

All-Time Rank #1936 By amount stolen

Protocol Type Exploit/Access control Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

Rubixi contract had a security issue, which allowed anyone to become a contract owner and withdrew fees.

Details of the Exploit

Rubixi was a project on the Ethereum chain designed to collect funds and had a privileged function to collect fees. The contract itself had a logic issue, which allowed anyone to become a contract owner and withdraw fees for themselves. The constructor of the contract was named wrong and become a regular function.

After becoming a contract owner, anyone can call the unprotected function collectAllFees() to withdraw fees. The contract currently has only 4 $ETH, which is stuck and can't be withdrawn.

Block Data Reference

Deployment transaction:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x4496b642…8f8ec3

Contract deployer:

https://etherscan.io/address/0xdd68da49…68ad60

Owner change example:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x9385dca4…10684c

Withdrawal example:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x580222b0…7dd472

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

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Rubixi

Date of Incident March 14, 2016

Attack Technique Access Control

Classification Other

Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exploit/Access control

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 Rubixi'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 Rubixi, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (March 2016).

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://hackenproof.com/vulnerabilities/5bd1ac7a75fa7418019cf8e1

Threat Assessment

Severity Level

LOW

Attack Vector Access Control
Root Cause Other
Year 2016

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