Safemoon Hack

TOTAL LOST $8.9M
Medium Access Control Exploit / Access Control bsc

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain bsc Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #327 By amount stolen
Auditors 1 Prior security audit

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

The liquidity pool (LP) for the DeFi project SafeMoon has been compromised, according to a statement from the project on Twitter on March 28.

Details of the Exploit

SafeMoon's LP was compromised due to a contract upgrade that introduced a public burn bug, allowing anyone to destroy tokens. The upgrade was initiated by the deployer contract, and there is a possibility of an admin key leak. After that, the complex attack tx was executed and gain a profit of about 28,364 WBNB.

Stolen funds were transferred to the 0x237d wallet. The cause of the issue has not been confirmed by SafeMoon, and it is unclear if any cryptocurrency has been stolen or recovered.

Block Data Reference

Upgrade proxy tx:

https://bscscan.com/tx/0x71273e73…c1c01d

Exploit tx:

https://bscscan.com/tx/0x48e52a12…33a934

Funds were transferred to the wallet:

https://bscscan.com/address/0x237d5859…e622ed

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

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Safemoon
Date of Incident
Affected Chain(s) bsc
Attack Technique Access Control Exploit / Access Control
Classification Protocol Logic / Token
Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exploit/Access control
Affected Token SFM
Smart Contract Language Solidity
Official Website safemoon.com/
Protocol Twitter/X @safemoon
Team Anonymous
Source Code Unverified

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories
Memes Ethereum Ecosystem
Protocol Links
GitHub Discord Reddit

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 Safemoon'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 Exploit / Access Control audit checklist and test coverage
Audited by HashEx — still lost $8.9M. Prior audits don't guarantee safety, especially after post-audit code changes.

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

  • Verify all logic paths related to Access Control Exploit / 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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Security Audit History

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

Proof-of-Concept Exploits

1 PoC available
poc-exploits - safemoon
$ SafeMoon Hack Access Control

On-Chain Evidence & References

Sources & References

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