How much was lost in the Samudai hack?

The Samudai hack resulted in $1.3M in losses on November 10, 2023.

What attack technique was used in the Samudai exploit?

The Samudai 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.

Samudai Hack

TOTAL LOST $1.3M

Medium Nov 10, 2023 Access Control

Affected Chain 2023 Incident surface

Recovered - No recovery reported

All-Time Rank #758 By amount stolen

Protocol Type Exploit/Access control Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

Samudai DAO wallet compromise led to a loss of assets worth approximately $1,286,349 with funds laundered through Tornado Cash.

Details of the Exploit

Samudai, a Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO), was exploited on November 10, 2023, presumably due to a compromise of their wallet access control. Both the multisignature wallet addresses of the protocol and the wallet of their founder appear to have been compromised, which led to a loss of 521.34 ETH in total. The stolen assets were all converted into ETH and then laundered into Tornado Cash.

A part of the stolen funds, worth 21.34 ETH (amounting to $52,680), was deposited at eXch exchange through several addresses. The founder has issued an on-chain message offering a 10% bounty for returning funds.

Block Data Reference

Attacker Address:

https://etherscan.io/address/0x112f27dD…5761aF

Malicious Transactions:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x7d3f66bd…fbbedf

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xbbbc44bb…0593a3

TornadoCash Deposit Transactions:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xb4d6f5b0…a1c13e

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x687ecca1…3fa8e2

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x1e3f7f58…79360a

Founder's Message:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x11996972…24e5dc

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

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Samudai

Date of Incident November 10, 2023

Attack Technique Access Control

Classification Other

Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exploit/Access control

Official Website www.samudai.xyz/

Protocol Twitter/X @samudaixyz

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 Samudai'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 Samudai, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (November 2023).

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://twitter.com/CyversAlerts/status/1747927183069184293?s=20
02
Web Archive https://archive.is/ECrAV

Threat Assessment

Severity Level

MEDIUM

Attack Vector Access Control
Root Cause Other
Year 2023

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