TECRA Hack

TOTAL LOST $643K
Low Other

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2022 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #945 By amount stolen
Protocol Type Exploit/Other Target category

Incident Overview

The exploiter's address:

https://etherscan.io/address/0xb19b7f59…e9c299

The transaction behind the exploit:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x81e9918e…631154

The attacker:

- approved a big number of tokens to the Uniswap pool

- bought 101 TCR from the pool

- used the loophole to burn the TCR owned by the pool, increasing the TCR price

- used the bought TCR to take away a lot of USDT

Wrong implementation:

function burnFrom(address from, uint256 amount) external {

require(_allowances[msg.sender][from] >= amount, ERROR_ATL);

Correct one:

require(_allowances[from][msg.sender] >= amount, ERROR_ATL);

The actual token implementation allows any account A to burn tokens from any other account B if account A approves that number of tokens to B.

The part of the stolen funds was deposited into Tornado Cash mixer, and the rest holds on the exploiter's address:

https://bloxy.info/txs/transfers_from/0xb19b7f59…e9c299?currency_id=1

Incident Report

Protocol / Project TECRA
Date of Incident
Attack Technique Other
Classification Token
Primary Source View Post-Mortem #1 View Post-Mortem #2

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exploit/Other
Affected Token TCR
Official Website tecra.space/
Protocol Twitter/X @TecraCoin
Team Anonymous
Source Code Unverified

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories
Mineable
Protocol Links
GitHub Discord

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 TECRA'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 TECRA, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (February 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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