What happened
On May 12, 2026, SQ Protocol on BNB Chain was exploited for approximately $346,137.
Technical root cause
A hardcoded owner backdoor in the verified staking contract enabled an ownership takeover through an authorizationList transaction, permitting the attacker to create and redeem fraudulent staking claims.
How it happened
The attacker took ownership of the staking contract, created false staking claims, redeemed roughly 296,500 USDT, swept SQi tokens, and sold SQi into the SQi/USDT pool for additional proceeds.
Protocol details
Classification
Access Control
Protocol Type
DeFi Protocol
Implementation language
Solidity
Evidence
- analysis DeFiLlama defillama.com
- analysis SlowMist Hacked: SQ Protocol hacked.slowmist.io
Understand the attack patterns
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