Safe Hack

TOTAL LOST $284K
Low Other

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2023 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #1167 By amount stolen
Protocol Type Services Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

Safe Wallet (formerly Gnosis Safe) on Ethereum was exploited due to an approval-related issue, resulting in a loss of 283,828 $USD from the user's wallet in various tokens.

Details of the Exploit

Between August 12 and August 13, 2023, Safe Wallet, a DeFi wallet on the Ethereum chain, was exploited by three attackers in three separate transactions. The attackers discovered an approval-related flaw that allowed them to steal various tokens including WBTC, PEPE, USDT, WETH, and CRV. The issue appears to be approval-related and the attack vector was the same across the three hacks, but the implementation differed.

The total loss from these exploits amounts to approximately 283,828 $USD.

Block Data Reference

Attackers:

- https://etherscan.com/address/0xb9c77db3…3ce385

- https://etherscan.com/address/0x38F887a0…f32F70

- https://etherscan.com/address/0x7d9bC45a…d72e26

Malicious Transactions:

- https://etherscan.com/tx/0x31f9d94d…3962b9

- https://etherscan.com/tx/0x5706654a…843eaa

- https://etherscan.com/tx/0x7b675b1d…ad96e0

Malicious Contract Addresses:

- https://etherscan.com/address/0x965a3A60…5c0573

- https://etherscan.com/address/0xA1038f64…686838

- https://etherscan.com/address/0xabB8cDD6…efe680

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Safe
Date of Incident
Attack Technique Other
Classification Other
Primary Source View Post-Mortem #1 View Post-Mortem #2

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Services
Official Website safe.global/
Protocol Twitter/X @safe
Team Anonymous
Source Code Unverified

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories
DeFi Staking Wallet Ethereum Ecosystem Account Abstraction Binance Alpha Binance Ecosystem Binance Listing
Protocol Links
GitHub Discord

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 other 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 Safe'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? Likely — with a thorough Other audit checklist and test coverage

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Safe, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (August 2023).

  • Verify all logic paths related to Other 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

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