Wintermute Hack

TOTAL LOST $27.6M
High #182 All-Time Cross Chain Multisig Deployment Exploit optimism

Summarize with AI

Affected Chain optimism Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #182 By amount stolen
Year 2022 Incident year

Incident Overview

Winter (WINTER) is a cryptocurrency launched in 2021and operates on the Ethereum platform. Winter has a current supply of 5,636,715 with 0 in circulation. The last known price of Winter is 0.0029906 USD and is up 2.62 over the last 24 hours.

It is currently trading on 4 active market(s) with $0.00 traded over the last 24 hours. More information can be found at https://www.seasonaltokens.org/.

Incident Report

Protocol / Project Wintermute
Date of Incident
Affected Chain(s) optimism
Attack Technique Cross Chain Multisig Deployment Exploit
Classification Infrastructure
Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Official Website www.seasonaltokens.org/
Protocol Twitter/X @Seasonal_Tokens

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories
Ethereum Ecosystem Polygon Ecosystem

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 cross chain multisig deployment exploit and Solidity and EVM internals
Capital Required Seed capital to cover gas and initial position setup
On-Chain Access Ability to interact with optimism smart contracts and deploy a custom exploit contract
Protocol Analysis Identification of the exploitable vulnerability in Wintermute's contract logic - root cause: infrastructure
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 Cross Chain Multisig Deployment Exploit 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 Cross Chain Multisig Deployment Exploit 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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