ShadowFi Hack

TOTAL LOST $303K
Low Other

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2022 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #1141 By amount stolen
Auditors 2 Prior security audits

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

The ShadowFi project was exploited by a hacker who took advantage of a vulnerability in the $SDF token, making a profit of 1078 $BNB.

Details of the Exploit

ShadowFi is a BEP20 token focused on anonymous payments, NFT, and passive income. The hack proceeds in two parts.

In the first part, the hacker used a scanner to track new token pairs, and stole $WBNB on PancakePair contract.

In the second part, another attacker used the burn function, which mistakenly allows any user to burn $SDF tokens from any address. The attacker burns almost all $SDF tokens on the liquidity pool, so the token price was unfairly high. He deployed an exploit smart contract to use the situation to swap 9 $SDF tokens for 1078 $WBNB and made a profit of 302,817 $USD. Consequently, he swapped all the stolen funds and transferred them to Tornado Cash.

Block Data Reference

Affected address of token pair:

https://www.bscscan.com/address/0xf9e3151e…ce650a

Address of attacker:

https://bscscan.com/address/0x64785767…492205

Swap transaction:

https://www.bscscan.com/tx/0xe30dc752…a01018

Incident Report

Protocol / Project ShadowFi
Date of Incident
Attack Technique Other
Classification Token
Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exploit/Other
Affected Token SDF
Official Website shadowfi.com/
Protocol Twitter/X @ShadowFi_
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 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 ShadowFi'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? Likely — with a thorough Other audit checklist and test coverage
Audited by InterFi, Ether Authority — still lost $303K. Prior audits don't guarantee safety, especially after post-audit code changes.

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to ShadowFi, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (September 2022).

  • 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.

Free Trial

Security Audit History

  • InterFi Report unavailable
  • Ether Authority Report unavailable

Sources & References

Browse all hacks

These hacks used the same attack technique. Understanding the pattern helps prevent future exploits.

DeFiTuna $570K
Other
Cascade $1.3M
Other
Lumi Finance $264K
Other
Hinkal $820K
Other
AIDCToken $121K
Other
Polymarket $3.0M
Other

Learn to Prevent the Next ShadowFi

The ShadowFi hack is one of many attacks that skilled auditors are trained to detect before deployment. Master real exploit patterns and defense techniques with hands-on Web3 security training.

Start Free Trial Browse Attack Library
Recreate exploit patterns safely Free Trial