VERDICT —OUT OF SCOPE
Root cause is private-key / signer compromise — the on-chain contract behaved exactly as written. No pre-deployment source audit or bytecode review reaches the key-custody perimeter; this is operational-security territory (HSM/MPC hygiene, key rotation, hot-wallet isolation). Bytecode would show nothing wrong.
▰ METHOD
PRIVATE KEY
PRIVATE-KEY
Root cause
Root-cause analysis not yet published. The incident description below contains all currently available signal — review the attack transaction directly for definitive forensics.
Forensic narrative
According to the official announcement, some ERC-20, BSC and Polygon tokens of AscendEX were abnormally transferred out of the hot wallet of the exchange, and the cold wallet of AscendEX was not affected by this incident. It is estimated that Pinnacle AscendEX’s losses totaled US$77.7 million (of which US$60 million was on Ethereum, US$9.2 million was on BSC, and US$8.5 million was on Polygon). Attack method (per SlowMist): Wallet Stolen. Reported loss: $ 77,700,000.
Primary source
https://www.wu-talk.com/html/kuaixun/2021_2359.html ↗Sourced from
slowmist
Technical record
- chain
- ethereum
- protocol
- AscendEX
- bug_class
- private-key
- date_occurred
- 2021-12-12
- loss_usd
- $77,700,000
- source_id
- sm:ascendex::2021-12-12
Related — same bug class· private-key