ChainBleedv0.1 · open intel
← back to feed·POLYMEV2023-11-23 · 2y ago
Incident · SLOWMIST

Kyber Network

Liquidity Exploit
Estimated loss
$54.70M
VERDICT —UNRATED
Verdict pending. Auto-ingested incidents are reviewed before a public verdict is rendered.
▰ METHOD
MEV
MEVBYTECODE CATCHABLEAI SCANNABLE
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

Kyber Network tweeted that KyberSwap Elastic has experienced a security incident. According to the analysis of the SlowMist security team, the root cause of this attack is that in calculating the number of tokens needed for the exchange from the current price to the boundary scale price, the liquidity will be added to the portion of the fee compounding because of KyberSwap Elastic's reinvestment curve, thus causing its calculation result to be larger than expected, which can cover the user's need for exchange, but the actual price has already crossed the boundary scale, which makes the protocol think that the liquidity within the current scale has already met the need for exchange, and therefore does not carry out liquidity update. The protocol assumes that the liquidity within the current scale is sufficient to cover the redemption needs, and therefore does not update the liquidity. The result is that the liquidity is increased twice when the reverse exchange crosses the boundary scale, allowing the attacker to obtain more tokens than expected. On Nov. 27, the Kyber Network tweeted that the KyberSwap team had contacted the owner of the frontrun bots that had withdrawn approximately $5.7 million from the KyberSwap pool on Polygon and Avalanche. After negotiations, the owners of the frontrun bots have agreed to return 90% of their users' funds to a designated address. In return, they will receive a 10% bounty. On December 13th, the KyberSwap team recovered approximately $508,000 worth of funds from the owners of frontrun bots. To date, the total amount of funds returned by the owners of frontrun bots is approximately $5.17 million. Attack method (per SlowMist): Liquidity Exploit. Reported loss: $ 54,700,000.

Primary source
https://twitter.com/KyberNetwork/status/1727475235342217682
Sourced from
slowmist
Technical record
chain
polygon
protocol
Kyber Network
bug_class
mev
date_occurred
2023-11-23
loss_usd
$54,700,000
source_id
sm:kyber-network::2023-11-23
Related — same bug class· mev
2026-05-01
1mo ago
BSC
LBP
BSC token contract exploit (likely LBP bonding-curve manipulation)
mev
$144.9K
UNRATED
2026-01-05
5mo ago
BSC
OLY token holders
Sandwich attack
mev
$63.4K
UNRATED
2025-12-28
5mo ago
BSC
MSCST
Atomic Sandwich Attack
mev
$129.9K
UNRATED
2025-12-04
6mo ago
ETH
US Permissionless Dollar
"CPIMP" proxy front-run
mev
$1.00M
UNRATED
2025-10-25
7mo ago
GMGN
Sandwich Attack
mev
UNRATED
2025-08-13
10mo ago
ETH
Coinbase
MEV composability attack
mev
$300.0K
UNRATED
ChainBleed — live web3 threat intelligence