Star Token Hack

TOTAL LOST $518K
Low Other

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2023 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #991 By amount stolen
Protocol Type Chain Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

Star Token was exploited via price manipulation, resulting in a loss of 517,684 USD.

Details of the Exploit

Star Token (STV) is a BEP20 token traded on PancakeSwap. On August 26, 2023, an attacker exploited a vulnerability in STV's unverified smart contract by manipulating the price, ultimately profiting by a total of 517,684 USD. The attacker took most of the stolen funds and deposited them into TornadoCash, while the remaining 119,902 USDT was transferred to another externally owned account (EOA) and remains at that address as of August 29, 2023.

Block Data Reference

Attackers Addresses:

https://bscscan.com/address/0x4b44B52E…b6d8C3

https://bscscan.com/address/0xF037A9F7…370B04

Funds Holder as of August 29, 2023:

https://bscscan.com/address/0x011c1a98…a25c75

Malicious Transaction:

https://bscscan.com/tx/0xf2a0c957…a30c12

TornadoCash Deposit Transaction:

https://bscscan.com/tx/0x3ca50ae3…f4a553

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Star Token
Date of Incident
Attack Technique Other
Classification Token
Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Chain
Affected Token STV
Official Website fasttoken.com/
Protocol Twitter/X @fasttoken_com
Team Anonymous
Source Code Unverified

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories
Ethereum Ecosystem
Protocol Links
GitHub

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 other and Solidity and EVM internals
Capital Required Seed capital to cover gas and initial position setup
On-Chain Access Ability to interact with smart contracts and deploy a custom exploit contract
Protocol Analysis Identification of the exploitable vulnerability in Star Token's contract logic - root cause: token
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 Other audit checklist and test coverage

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Star Token, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (August 2023).

  • 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

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Sources & References

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