How much was lost in the Tableland hack?

The Tableland hack resulted in $46K in losses on July 21, 2022.

What attack technique was used in the Tableland exploit?

The Tableland exploit utilized Phishing. 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.

Tableland Hack

TOTAL LOST $46K

Low Jul 21, 2022 Phishing

Affected Chain 2022 Incident surface

Recovered - No recovery reported

All-Time Rank #1738 By amount stolen

Protocol Type Exploit/Phishing Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

The Tableland Discord was compromised by a hacker posing as a moderator on the channel. The hacker published a link to the fake Tableland website inside Tableland's Discord group. During any interaction with the website, the assets of the users were withdrawn from their wallets to the addresses of the scammer.

Details of the Exploit

The Tableland Network is a decentralized web3 protocol for structured relational data, focussing on Ethereum and EVM-compatible L2s.

Community members that reached the phishing domain, triggered a function to witdraw funds from their browser-based wallets through clicking the mint button. The stolen assets were sent to two ETH wallets:

- hacker address (A)

- hacker address (B)

Hacker address (A) began receiving stolen assets through a phishing domain. Eleven Tableland Rigs (Name of the NFT collection) were sent to this address, as well as NFT from other projects. The tokens were stored for a short period of time before they were sold on an open trading platform or transferred to the address of a hacker address (B).

Block Data Reference

Involved addresses:

- Hacker address (A): https://etherscan.io/address/0x28804031…63b716

- Hacker address (B): https://etherscan.io/address/0xb3b79426…30e8e9

This is classified as a Phishing Attacks . Compare similar hacks →

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Tableland

Date of Incident July 21, 2022

Attack Technique Phishing

Classification NFT

Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exploit/Phishing

Official Website tableland.xyz/

Protocol Twitter/X @tableland__

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 phishing 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 Tableland's contract logic - root cause: nft

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 Phishing audit checklist and test coverage

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

Verify all logic paths related to Phishing are guarded by proper access controls and input validation - see the Phishing 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

Master these auditing techniques with hands-on labs and real exploit scenarios in the Smart Contract Hacking course.

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Related Attack Classes

The technique used in this hack maps to these vulnerability classes in our security curriculum:

See all Phishing Attacks examples →

Phishing Attacks

Sources & References

01
Source 1 https://docs.tableland.xyz/security/anatomy-of-a-fakemint
02
Web Archive https://web.archive.org/web/20220513051518/https://tableland.xyz/

Threat Assessment

Severity Level

LOW

Attack Vector Phishing
Root Cause NFT
Year 2022

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