Incident Overview
Digital currency exchange ShapeShift lost as much as $230,000 in three separate thefts over the course of a month.
According to the report, the first incident took place on 14th March, the company said, resulting in the loss of 315 BTC. It was soon established that a ShapeShift employee was behind the incident.
The employee was fired the next day. Work was then begun on moving the service onto safer hardware.
Yet according to ShapeShift’s report, the thefts continued. On 7th April, 97 BTC, 3,600 ETH, and 1,900 LTC in funds were stolen. Within two days of that theft, after the site was taken offline and steps were taken to beef up security, an additional 57 BTC and 2,200 ETH were taken.
Incident Report
Protocol Information
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.
What Auditors Should Check
If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Shapeshift, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (April 2016).
- 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.
Free TrialRelated Attack Classes
The technique used in this hack maps to these vulnerability classes in our security curriculum:
Sources & References
Learn to Prevent the Next Shapeshift
The Shapeshift 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.