Terraport Finance Hack

TOTAL LOST $4.0M
Medium Other

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2023 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #472 By amount stolen
Auditors 1 Prior security audit

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

On the morning of April 10th, Terraport was exploited resulting in losses of approximately 4 million USD in Terra, LUNC, and USTC tokens.

Details of the Exploit

The hack was made possible due to a mathematical weakness in the algorithm used to calculate LP prices. The malicious actor added a minor amount of liquidity to the protocol and then manipulated the LP share price, allowing them to withdraw a large amount of liquidity. Two pools were affected, the first one drained for 9,148,426 TERRA ($1.8 million) and 15,100,861,997 LUNC ($1.88 million), and the second one for 576,736 TERRA ($115K) and 5,487,381 USTC ($117K).

The total losses amount to about $4 million USD.

Block Data Reference

Exploited Addresses:

terra19yrq0mehjfk5cquxn4svjxft4rmhcc9g8t0yma

terra1z5luj6qdtclnt5jnjkrtnlj9zankf654638dq2

Added liquidity:

https://finder.terra.money/classic/tx/bdd941dfcebd8d7f3acd2214026110688751ca68ea2904aba 55b8c01c92d29b0https://finder.terra.money/classic/tx/8c23dc1d6bf26281e726e410327d71a681f6835331e1da0ce39dc73a508a63e1

Remove liquidity:

https://finder.terra.money/classic/tx/BEE71FBD0F343127D90D87FDFD1488354848C4D4AC4EEC59220A9D7833033408

https://finder.terra.money/classic/tx/FF508F3C7E993DFC82F8446FC1E48E923AA051B7DBD309C2270972F696C9B0D7

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Terraport Finance
Date of Incident
Attack Technique Other
Classification Exchange (DEX)
Primary Source View Post-Mortem #1 View Post-Mortem #2

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Cross Chain Bridge
Affected Token TERRA
Official Website www.terraport.finance/
Protocol Twitter/X @_Terraport_
Team Anonymous
Source Code Unverified

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories
Solana Ecosystem Polygon Ecosystem Fantom Ecosystem BNB Chain Ecosystem Aptos Ecosystem Sui Ecosystem MoveVM (MVM)
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 Terraport Finance's contract logic - root cause: exchange (dex)
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 Audit Report 1 — still lost $4.0M. Prior audits don't guarantee safety, especially after post-audit code changes.

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Terraport Finance, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (April 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

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

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