Unknown User Hack

TOTAL LOST $3.7M
Medium Phishing

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2024 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #498 By amount stolen
Protocol Type Exploit/Phishing Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

The user lost 4.20 million in a phishing attack on Ethereum, resulting in a loss of 3,725,002 USD worth of aEthWETH and aEthUNI tokens.

Details of the Exploit

On January 21, 2024, a user fell victim to a phishing attack on the Ethereum network. The attacker exploited multiple ERC20 Permit signatures, using temp addresses pre-computed by CREATE2. The user lost 1576.04 aEthWETH and 39,933.12 aEthUNI tokens, equivalent to 3.72 million USD.

The stolen funds were transferred to another EOAs and still remain in these addresses .

Block Data Reference

Attacker Address:

https://etherscan.io/address/0x0000db5c…e70000

Funds Holder as of Jan 23, 2024:

https://etherscan.io/address/0xd9b78d83…d557Bc

Malicious Transactions:

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x93a0ce07…0c2f09

https://etherscan.io/tx/0xbc43a531…71b583

Malicious Contract Address:

https://etherscan.io/address/0xed0e416e…b60572

This is classified as a Phishing Attacks . Compare similar hacks →

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Unknown User
Date of Incident
Attack Technique Phishing
Classification Other
Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exploit/Phishing
Team Anonymous
Source Code Unverified

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 phishing 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 Unknown User's contract logic - root cause: other
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 Phishing audit checklist and test coverage

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to Unknown User, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (January 2024).

  • Verify all logic paths related to Phishing are guarded by proper access controls and input validation - see the Phishing Attacks attack class for patterns
  • 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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Related Attack Classes

The technique used in this hack maps to these vulnerability classes in our security curriculum:

See all Phishing Attacks examples →

Phishing Attacks

Sources & References

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Learn to Prevent the Next Unknown User

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