PancakeSwap

Private Key Leakage

Estimated loss

$1.80M

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.

▰ PROOF OF CONCEPT

DEFIHACKLABS

src/test/2021-05/PancakeBunny_exp.sol

view forked test on github ↗

Reproducible Foundry test fork from SunWeb3Sec/DeFiHackLabs. Clone the repo, run forge test against the file path above, and replay the exploit against a mainnet fork at the historical block. Use for reproduction only — not for live targets.

Forensic narrative

According to sources, since April 12, 2021, a person who has access to Binance Smart Chain account 0x35f16a46d3cf19010d28578a8b02dfa3cb4095a1 (PancakeSwap administrator account) has stolen 59,765 Cakes (approximately US$1,800,000) from the PancakeSwap lottery pool. After hackers exploited the vulnerability several times, PancakeSwap banned the account. Attack method (per SlowMist): Private Key Leakage. Reported loss: $ 1,800,000.

Primary source

https://cryptopwnage.medium.com/1-800-000-was-stolen-from-binance-smart-chain-pancakeswap-lottery-pool-ca2afb415f9 ↗

Sourced from

slowmist

Technical record