How much was lost in the Safereum hack?

The Safereum hack resulted in $1.3M in losses on October 24, 2023.

What attack technique was used in the Safereum exploit?

The Safereum 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.

Safereum Hack

TOTAL LOST $1.3M

Medium Oct 24, 2023 Rugpull

Affected Chain 2023 Incident surface

Recovered - No recovery reported

All-Time Rank #770 By amount stolen

Protocol Type Exit Scam/Rugpull Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

SAFEREUM token project experienced an exit scam rugpull, with the scammer draining liquidity worth 1,306,583 USD from UniSwap pools on Oct 24, 2023.

Details of the Exploit

SAFEREUM is an ERC20 token trading on UniSwap. The scammer with safereum.eth ENS unlocked 95,000,000,000 SAFEREUM tokens and sold them in two different pools on UniSwap. The stolen funds were distributed to multiple EOA addresses and consequently were sent to FixedFloat Exchange.

A part of the stolen funds was swapped to USDT in MetaMask and then sent to other EOA addresses. The total loss amounts to 1,306,583 USD, equivalent to 732.39 ETH.

Block Data Reference

Deployer Address:

https://etherscan.io/address/0xf7979E7F…934A6b

Scammer Address:

https://etherscan.io/address/0x67c8423a…7b807f

Unlock Transaction:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x7fd3ad13…96efb9

Liquidity Draining Transactions:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x880c9ba1…7cc5e2

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x7ea75430…a14ecf

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x98568ec9…a10c7c

Funds Transfer Transaction Example:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xc3c7100c…a718c5

FixedFloat Deposit Transaction Example:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x4c2a90d4…2da12f

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Safereum

Date of Incident October 24, 2023

Attack Technique Rugpull

Classification Token

Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exit Scam/Rugpull

Affected Token SAFEREUM

Official Website safereum.medium.com/

Protocol Twitter/X @safereum

Team Anonymous

Source Code Verified On-Chain

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories

Stellar Ecosystem

Protocol Links

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 Safereum's contract logic - root cause: token

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 Safereum, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (October 2023).

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://twitter.com/CertiKAlert/status/1716554530010157508?s=20
02
Web Archive https://archive.ph/bC6xq

Threat Assessment

Severity Level

MEDIUM

Attack Vector Rugpull
Root Cause Token
Year 2023

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