X2Y2 Hack

TOTAL LOST $165K
Low Phishing

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2022 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #1367 By amount stolen
Auditors 1 Prior security audit

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

Scammers used exploit to fake X2Y2 marketplace and stole nearly 100 ETH.

Details of the Exploit

X2Y2 is a NFT marketplace for decentralized trading on the Etherium Blockchain. Scammers used Google Ads to advertise their fake link that lead to a phishing website. The website tried to get the users seed phrase and execute the function to empty account balances.

Roughly 100 ETH were stolen  by this method.

Block Data Reference

Address of scammer: https://etherscan.io/address/0x4A036aa8…D98EBC

0x81d3ec77438b4e99aa99ba25b1dbc3fea317fe3b0x81d3ec77438b4e99aa99ba25b1dbc3fea317fe3b

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

Incident Report

Protocol / Project X2Y2
Date of Incident
Attack Technique Phishing
Classification NFT,Exchange (DEX)
Primary Source View Post-Mortem

Protocol Information

Protocol Type NFT Lending
Official Website x2y2.io
Protocol Twitter/X @the_x2y2
Team Anonymous
Source Code Unverified

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories
Ethereum Ecosystem
Protocol Links
Discord

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 X2Y2's contract logic - root cause: nft,exchange (dex)
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
Audited by Audit Report 1 — still lost $165K. Prior audits don't guarantee safety, especially after post-audit code changes.

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to X2Y2, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (May 2022).

  • 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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Security Audit History

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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