How much was lost in the Trust Bridge hack?

The Trust Bridge hack resulted in $120K in losses on November 20, 2022.

What attack technique was used in the Trust Bridge exploit?

The Trust Bridge exploit utilized Rugpull. 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.

Trust Bridge Hack

TOTAL LOST $120K

Low Nov 20, 2022 Rugpull

Affected Chain 2022 Incident surface

Recovered - No recovery reported

All-Time Rank #1465 By amount stolen

Protocol Type Bridge Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

Trust Bridge token was rugpulled by the token deployer. Liquidity removal caused a loss of 120,083 $USD.

Details of the Exploit

Trust Bridge is a BEP20 token trading on PancakeSwap. The token deployer created a pool with 5,000,000 $TWB tokens and 20,009 $BUSD on 15 November. On 20 November all the provided liquidity was removed for 140,092 $BUSD.

All the stolen funds were transferred through TornadoCash.

Block Data Reference

Scammer address:

https://bscscan.com/address/0x4f515c94…c99b91

Liquidity removal transaction:

https://bscscan.com/tx/0xdfc47840…4fb7a8

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Trust Bridge

Date of Incident November 20, 2022

Attack Technique Rugpull

Classification Token

Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Bridge

Affected Token TWB

Official Website octusbridge.io/bridge

Protocol Twitter/X @OctusBridge

Team Anonymous

Source Code Verified On-Chain

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 smart contracts and deploy a custom exploit contract

Protocol Analysis Identification of the exploitable vulnerability in Trust Bridge'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? Hard to catch — private key / OpSec failures are outside smart contract audit scope

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

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

01
Source 1 https://twitter.com/CertiKAlert/status/1594409841396678659

Threat Assessment

Severity Level

LOW

Attack Vector Rugpull
Root Cause Token
Year 2022

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