Vulcan Forged Hack

TOTAL LOST $140M
Critical #63 All-Time Private Key Compromised (Unknown Method) / Access Control ethereum polygon

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain ethereum 2 chains affected
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #63 By amount stolen
Protocol Type Exploit/Access control Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

Vulcan Forged project was exploited, and the private keys of 96 wallets were stolen with the assets of total worth 140,000,000 $USD

Details of the Exploit

Vulcan Forged creates wallets on behalf of its users and stores private keys on their own side. As a result, the leak of access to the private keys has affected 96 wallets and based on the token price during the hack, victims suffered a $140m total loss. Assets including ETH and MATIC have also been taken out.

96 transactions, where the hacker steals PYR token:

https://explorer.bitquery.io/matic/txs/transfers?receiver=0x48ad05a3…2c73b1&currency=0x348e6213…b380a9

Transactions, where PYR token was exchanged for MATIC, which later was distributed between external wallets:

https://explorer.bitquery.io/matic/txs/transfers?receiver=0x48ad05a3…2c73b1&currency=MATIC

Selling on Ethereum:

https://bloxy.info/txs/calls_from/0x48ad05a3…2c73b1?signature_id=1493863&smart_contract_address_bin=0x11111112…43097d

https://bloxy.info/txs/calls_from/0x48ad05a3…2c73b1?signature_id=1493862&smart_contract_address_bin=0x11111112…43097d

Part of the stolen funds was distributed between different external wallets as well as the other one was sold on Uniswap and QuickSwap.

Block Data Reference

Attacker address on Polygon:

https://polygonscan.com/address/0x48ad05a3…2c73b1

Attacker address on Ethereum:

https://etherscan.io/address/0x48ad05a3…2c73b1

2,000,000 PYR tokens are still held on this wallet:

https://etherscan.io/address/0xe3cd90be…e53b66#tokentxns

This is classified as a Access Control Attacks . Compare similar hacks →

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Vulcan Forged
Date of Incident
Affected Chain(s) ethereum polygon
Attack Technique Private Key Compromised (Unknown Method) / Access Control
Classification Infrastructure / Gaming / Metaverse / Gaming / Metaverse / Gaming / Metaverse / Gaming / Metaverse / Gaming / Metaverse / Gaming / Metaverse / Gaming / Metaverse / Gaming / Metaverse / Gaming / Metaverse / Gaming / Metaverse / Gaming / Metaverse / Gaming
Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exploit/Access control
Affected Token PYR
Official Website auth.vulcanforged.com/
Protocol Twitter/X @VulcanForged
Team Anonymous
Source Code Unverified

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories
Collectibles & NFTs Gaming Entertainment Ethereum Ecosystem Metaverse Polygon Ecosystem DWF Labs Portfolio Binance Ecosystem
Protocol Links
Reddit

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 Operational-security tradecraft (phishing, malware, leaked seed phrases, or insider access) to obtain treasury signing authority
Capital Required Minimal capital - only enough to cover gas while draining the compromised accounts
On-Chain Access Valid signing authority over the compromised wallets / multisig signers, allowing direct transfer of funds or stake authorization
Target Reconnaissance Identification of Vulcan Forged's high-value treasury accounts and the authority / multisig structure controlling them
Execution Speed Speed to drain the compromised accounts before the team detects the breach and revokes signing authority or freezes the assets
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 Vulcan Forged, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (December 2021).

  • Verify all logic paths related to Private Key Compromised (Unknown Method) / Access Control are guarded by proper access controls and input validation - see the Access Control 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 Access Control Attacks examples →

Access Control Attacks

Sources & References

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