Incident Overview
On November 28, 2024, the centralized exchange XT.com suspended withdrawals amid suspicion of a $1.7 million hack.
Shortly before XT.com acknowledged the breach, PeckShield identified a suspicious outflow of over $1.7 million in cryptocurrency, which was subsequently swapped for 461.58 Ether (ETH). The thief carried out the transaction through an address that moved the stolen tokens from XT.com’s wallets. XT.com responded by confirming the abnormal activity and suspending withdrawals, clarifying that the pilfered funds belonged to its reserves.
The exchange also announced plans to launch a Merkle tree proof of reserves in mid-December to increase transparency.
Incident Report
Protocol Information
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.
What Auditors Should Check
If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to XT Exchange, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (November 2024).
- Verify all logic paths related to 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.
Free TrialRelated Attack Classes
The technique used in this hack maps to these vulnerability classes in our security curriculum:
Sources & References
Learn to Prevent the Next XT Exchange
The XT Exchange hack is one of many attacks that skilled auditors are trained to detect before deployment. Master real exploit patterns and defense techniques with hands-on Web3 security training.