Incident Overview
On May 15, 2025, Zunami Protocol suffered a $500,000 exploit involving the collateral backing its zunUSD and zunETH stablecoins. The attacker laundered the stolen funds via Tornado Cash, making recovery difficult.
Unlike previous incidents involving flash loans or price manipulation, this attack stemmed from compromised privileged access. The exploiter used admin-level permissions to withdraw and redeem protocol collateral directly, indicating a critical failure in access control. The ETH obtained from the redemption was swiftly transferred to Tornado Cash, obfuscating the attack trail.
The exploit, executed entirely at the protocol level, suggests either a severe internal security lapse or potential insider threat.
Incident Report
Protocol Information
Market Context at Time of Hack
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 Zunami, these are the critical security checks that could have prevented this incident (May 2025).
- 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 Zunami
The Zunami 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.