Time Hack

TOTAL LOST $200K
Low Other

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2023 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #1294 By amount stolen
Protocol Type Exploit/Other Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

Time token, an ERC20 token on Ethereum, suffered a price manipulation exploit on Dec 6, 2023, resulting in a loss of 94 ETH or $200,000 USD.

Details of the Exploit

On December 6, 2023, Time token was exploited due to a smart contract vulnerability that allowed price manipulation via a public burn issue and vulnerable ERC2771 standard. The attacker exploited the vulnerable Forwarder contract and was able to drain funds from the DEX by burning TIME tokens to inflate the token price and take away rewards. The exploit resulted in a loss of 94 ETH, equivalent to approximately $200,000 USD.

Thirdweb, the deployer of the TimeToken contract, had issued a community alert regarding the security vulnerability on December 5th, 2023, following an internal disclosure on November 20, 2023. Users who deployed impacted pre-built smart contracts before November 22, 2023, at 7 PM PST need to take specific mitigation steps to address the vulnerability identified by Thirdweb. The stolen funds are currently at the malicious contract.

Block Data Reference

Attacker Address:

https://etherscan.io/address/0xfde0d157…81455a

Malicious Transaction:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xecdd111a…d2f6b6

Malicious Contract Address:

https://etherscan.io/address/0x6980a47b…bdbdd0

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Time
Date of Incident
Attack Technique Other
Classification Token
Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exploit/Other
Affected Token TIME
Official Website time.meme/
Protocol Twitter/X @timecoineth
Team Anonymous
Source Code Verified On-Chain

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories
Solana Ecosystem
Protocol Links
Telegram

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 Time'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 Time, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (December 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

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