How much was lost in the Squid Games hack?

The Squid Games hack resulted in $3.4M in losses on November 03, 2021.

What attack technique was used in the Squid Games exploit?

The Squid Games exploit utilized Drained Liquidity Pool. Understanding this attack vector is critical for smart contract auditors and developers building secure DeFi protocols.

How can developers prevent similar smart contract attacks?

Preventing smart contract hacks requires a combination of secure coding practices, thorough security audits, and understanding common attack vectors like reentrancy, oracle manipulation, and access control flaws. Smart Contract Hacking (SCH) provides hands-on training to help developers and auditors identify and prevent vulnerabilities before deployment.

Squid Games Hack

TOTAL LOST $3.4M

Medium Nov 03, 2021 Drained Liquidity Pool bsc

Affected Chain bsc Incident surface

Recovered - No recovery reported

All-Time Rank #524 By amount stolen

Year 2021 Incident year

Incident Overview

Squid Game (CTO) (SQUID) is a cryptocurrency and operates on the BNB Smart Chain (BEP20) platform. Squid Game (CTO) has a current supply of 800,000,000 with 0 in circulation. The last known price of Squid Game (CTO) is 0.00196921 USD and is up 3.51 over the last 24 hours.

It is currently trading on 15 active market(s) with $4,369.23 traded over the last 24 hours. More information can be found at https://squid.land/.

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Squid Games

Date of Incident November 03, 2021

Affected Chain(s) bsc

Attack Technique Drained Liquidity Pool

Classification Rugpull

Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Smart Contract Language Solidity

Official Website squid.land/

Protocol Twitter/X @SquidCto

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories

BNB Chain Ecosystem

Protocol Links

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 drained liquidity pool and Solidity and EVM internals

Capital Required Seed capital to cover gas and initial position setup

On-Chain Access Ability to interact with bsc smart contracts and deploy a custom exploit contract

Protocol Analysis Identification of the exploitable vulnerability in Squid Games's contract logic - root cause: rugpull

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 Drained Liquidity Pool audit checklist and test coverage

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Squid Games, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (November 2021).

Verify all logic paths related to Drained Liquidity Pool 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.

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Sources & References

01
Source 1 https://x.com/__tricck/status/1455083308702834690

Threat Assessment

Severity Level

MEDIUM

Attack Vector Drained Liquidity Pool
Root Cause Rugpull
Year 2021

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