Incident Overview
On July 28, 2025, SuperRare's RareStakingV1 contract was exploited for approximately $730,000 USD (~11.9M RARE tokens). The vulnerability stemmed from a broken access control check in the updateMerkleRoot() function that allowed any unauthorized user to submit malicious Merkle roots and fraudulently claim tokens from the staking reward pool.
The root cause was a critical logic flaw in the updateMerkleRoot() function's access control mechanism. The function was designed to restrict Merkle root updates to the contract owner or a specific authorized address, but contained a misconfigured require statement using inverted logic. The vulnerable code used require((msg.sender != owner() || msg.sender != address(0xc2F394a4…7c8ddc)), "Not authorized to update merkle root"); with != (not equal) operators and an || (OR) condition.
This logic incorrectly allowed any address to pass the check, since any address cannot simultaneously be both the owner and the authorized address, making the condition always evaluate to true. The attacker exploited this by calculating a malicious Merkle root (0x93f3c), submitting it via a frontrunner transaction, and then using the claim() function to withdraw the tokens. The stolen funds remain in the attacker's contract and have not been swapped, with the $RARE token itself unaffected by the exploit.
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 SuperRare, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (July 2025).
- Verify all logic paths related to updateMerkleRoot Access Control Exploit / Access Control are guarded by proper access controls and input validation - see the Access Control 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
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Free TrialRelated Attack Classes
The technique used in this hack maps to these vulnerability classes in our security curriculum:
Proof-of-Concept Exploits
On-Chain Evidence & References
- Twitter/X Alert https://x.com/SlowMist_Team/status/1949770231733530682
Sources & References
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