Wintermute Hack

TOTAL LOST $27.6M
High #182 All-Time Other

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2022 Incident surface
Recovered $23.5M 85.0% returned
All-Time Rank #182 By amount stolen
Protocol Type Exploit/Other Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

Wintermute was exploited for approximately $27.6M due to an address error.

Details of the Exploit

The funds were supposed to be sent to Wintermute by the Optimism Foundation as part of an agreement to perform Wintermute functions as a market maker on the eve of the launch of the OP token. However, Wintermute provided the address of their multisig on Ethereum as the destination address for Optimism - it was an address that they did not control. The exploiter was able to recreate the multisig address on Optimism and send himself 1M tokens. Then 1M OP was sent to Vitalic's address. The exploiter returned 17M OP on Jun 10th.

Stolen funds:

- 1M OP tokens

Block Data Reference

Exploiter address: https://optimistic.etherscan.io/address/0x60b28637…ba5107

Transaction behind the attack: https://optimistic.etherscan.io/tx/0xe9491bfb…dee303

Transaction of returning funds: https://optimistic.etherscan.io/address/0x4f3a120e…31cb81#tokentxns

Incident Report

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

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Exploit/Other
Official Website www.wintermute.com/
Protocol Twitter/X @wintermute_t
Team Public / Doxxed
Source Code Verified On-Chain

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories
Ethereum Ecosystem Polygon Ecosystem
Protocol Links
GitHub Discord 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 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 Wintermute'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 Other audit checklist and test coverage

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

  • 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

Master these auditing techniques with hands-on labs and real exploit scenarios in the Smart Contract Hacking course.

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Funds Recovery

85.0%

Recovered

$23.5M

Net Loss

4140000

Sources & References

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