Tomatos Hack

TOTAL LOST $286K
Low Rugpull ethereum

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain ethereum Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #1164 By amount stolen
Protocol Type CEX Target category

Incident Overview

The withdrawal of the user's funds was possible by the smart contract's unlimited malicious approval, which granted attacker to take DAI, TrueUSD, USDC-Tomatoes LP, USDC, USDT, and UNI from users' wallets. Users that deposited ETH during the pre-sale did not get project tokens. The project's social media is inaccessible. Stolen funds were deposited into Tornado mixer:

1. 0x96f3bae8…d53924

2. 0xe908da08…c9dcee

3. 0x56ddf87a…c8a880

4. 0x3aa6c5c4…5692b4

5. 0xcc8c4d38…d74156

6. 0x1091bd2e…93f15a

7. 0x7ec1bcac…fd3f7a

8. 0xb0b725ca…6ac3ae

Example transactions of withdrawal from the fake contracts:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x264e1a5a…8a11c6

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xb0b725ca…6ac3ae

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xcab4d6e0…99ddc3

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xcbf6858d…7d1d89

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x5399f79a…5b3b34

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x7d61c0b1…76ec74

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x7efa4390…9bf101

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x3e51d5f0…4addfc

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Tomatos
Date of Incident
Affected Chain(s) ethereum
Attack Technique Rugpull
Classification Exchange (DEX)
Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type CEX
Affected Token TOMATOS
Official Website tomatos.finance/
Protocol Twitter/X @FinanceTomatos

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories
Solana Ecosystem
Protocol Links

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 rugpull and Solidity and EVM internals
Capital Required Seed capital to cover gas and initial position setup
On-Chain Access Ability to interact with ethereum smart contracts and deploy a custom exploit contract
Protocol Analysis Identification of the exploitable vulnerability in Tomatos'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? Hard to catch — private key / OpSec failures are outside smart contract audit scope

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Tomatos, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (September 2020).

  • Verify all logic paths related to Rugpull 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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Sources & References

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