Incident Overview
Spartan Protocol was exploited due to a flawed liquidity share calculation in the protocol, allowing the attacker to drain funds from the pool.
The attacker initiated the exploit by taking a flash loan of 10K WBNB. They then repeatedly swapped WBNB for SPARTA, inflated the asset balance in the pool, and burned pool tokens to withdraw liquidity. This process was repeated multiple times, draining substantial funds from the pool. The attacker then returned the flash loan with a fee of 260 WBNB. The stolen funds were swapped to BTCB or BETH using 1inch and Spartan, and then to Anyswap versions using Nerve. The attacker was able to withdraw part of the profit through Anyswap.
Stolen funds:
- 2,643,882.074112804607308497 SPARTA
- 21,555.69728926154636986 WBNB
The attacker's address:
https://bscscan.com/address/0x3b6e7772…b83671
The transaction behind the attack:
https://bscscan.com/tx/0xb64ae25b…b93af8
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 Spartan Protocol, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (May 2021).
- Verify all logic paths related to Flash Loan Attack are guarded by proper access controls and input validation - see the Flash Loans 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 TrialSecurity Audit History
- Audit Report 1 Report
Related Attack Classes
The technique used in this hack maps to these vulnerability classes in our security curriculum:
Sources & References
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