Incident Overview
On September 21, 2024, Shezmu Yield Protocol suffered a $4.9M exploit due to a vulnerability in one of its vaults, enabling the attacker to mint unlimited ShezUSD.
A flaw in Shezmu’s vault mechanism allowed an attacker to arbitrarily mint ShezUSD, effectively creating an infinite supply. This exploit occurred shortly after a smart contract upgrade, suggesting a potential oversight in the update. The attacker took advantage of the unchecked minting mechanism, draining Shezmu’s liquidity.
In response, Shezmu offered a bug bounty, successfully negotiating the return of funds.
Incident Report
Protocol Information
Market Context at Time of Hack
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 Shezmu, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (September 2024).
- 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 TrialSecurity Audit History
- Audit Report 1 Report
Sources & References
Learn to Prevent the Next Shezmu
The Shezmu 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.