ZBExchange Hack

TOTAL LOST $4.8M
Medium Other

Summarize with AI

ChatGPT Perplexity Claude Grok
Affected Chain 2022 Incident surface
Recovered - No recovery reported
All-Time Rank #447 By amount stolen
Protocol Type Dexs Target category

Incident Overview

Quick Summary

An attack was carried out on ZBExchange during which a hacker managed to steal approximately $4.8M.

Details of the Exploit

The ZBExchange provides cryptocurrency exchange services for both cryptos to fiat and crypto to crypto trading pairs.

The hacker took advantage of a vulnerability, which allowed him to steal $ETH and $ERC20 tokens from the ZB Hot Wallet. Since the ZBExchange hot wallet was compromised, it is possible that the hacker managed to obtain a private key, which allowed the tokens to be withdrawn to the scammer address (A). In this transaction, scammer address(A) sends 2k $ETH to scammer address (B):

https://etherscan.io/tx/0x740261ce…494f64

some of the stolen funds are located at scammer address (B).

Block Data Reference

Victim address: https://etherscan.io/address/0xe019d99f…fa0a62

Hacker addresses:

1) https://etherscan.io/address/0x67c67b5a…3f1055

2) https://etherscan.io/address/0x26446c16…1d3fc2

Incident Report

Protocol / Project ZBExchange
Date of Incident
Attack Technique Other
Classification Exchange (DEX)
Primary Source View Post-Mortem #1 View Post-Mortem #2 View Post-Mortem #3

Protocol Information

Protocol Type Dexs
Affected Token ZB
Official Website www.zb.com/en/login
Protocol Twitter/X @ZBexchange
Team Anonymous
Source Code Unverified

Market Context at Time of Hack

Token Categories
Payments
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 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 ZBExchange's contract logic - root cause: 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 Other audit checklist and test coverage

If you're auditing a protocol with similar architecture to ZBExchange, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (August 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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Sources & References

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