Starstream / Agora Hack

TOTAL LOST $15.0M
High Other

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2022 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #263 By amount stolen
Auditors 1 Prior security audit

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

The Starstream project was exploited on 532M $STARS tokens, which were then placed on Agora DeFi, where assets including $METIS, $WETH and $MUSDC were borrowed. Total losses amounted to ~$15M.

Details of the Exploit

Starstream is a suite of products for providing yield aggregation and yield generation on the Metis L2 rollup.

The attacker used the external function execute(), the Distributortreasury contract, which allowed sending $STARS tokens to the attacker's address. The attacker then deposited the stolen $STARS tokens in Agora DeFi loan contracts and leveraged assets, including $METIS, $WETH, and $MUSDC. The attacker used an Exchange Proxy to move the funds to the Ethereum blockchain before sending funds to Tornado.cash. In total the attacker sent 900 $ETH to Tornado.cash. The attacker then returned 120 $ETH back to METIS network via the Metis Andromeda Bridge.

As the time of this writing information on this case is scarce. More sources will be added if the case should develop.

Block Data Reference

Attacker addresses:

ETH: https://etherscan.io/address/0xffd90c77…ac9c48

METIS: https://andromeda-explorer.metis.io/address/0xFFD90C77…ac9C48/transactions

0x Exchange proxy transaction: https://etherscan.io/tx/0xd72b46cf…58858d

Tornado.cash deposit example transactions:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x4f112e10…28125d

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x80a3aad3…bf15d0

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x596cdfe1…26aca6

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Starstream / Agora
Date of Incident
Attack Technique Other
Classification Yield Aggregator
Primary Source View Post-Mortem #1 View Post-Mortem #2

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exploit/Other
Affected Token STARS
Official Website starstream.finance/
Protocol Twitter/X @starstreamfin
Team Anonymous
Source Code Unverified

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 Starstream / Agora's contract logic - root cause: yield aggregator
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
Audited by Solidity Finance — still lost $15.0M. Prior audits don't guarantee safety, especially after post-audit code changes.

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Starstream / Agora, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (April 2022).

  • 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.

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Security Audit History

  • Solidity Finance 2022-02-03 Report unavailable

Sources & References

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