The leaks · 49 / 86 · 3 min
Exploit patterns
People have lost deposits because a contract did the steps in the wrong order, trusted a price it should not have, or let someone borrow for one transaction and take the pool. This course names the losses. It does not teach the attack.
This figure names how deposits were lost. It does not describe how to do it.
A worked case
A pool is emptied and the write-up is full of steps. A reader wants the steps. The only lesson that belongs here is the shape of the loss: the contract trusted an order, a price, or a loan that lasted one transaction. Looking for a recipe is how the next person gets used.
What has happened
A withdrawal that could be repeated. A price that was shoved for a single moment. A loan that existed only for one transaction and was used to empty a pool. Users woke up to a contract with nothing left.
What you do with that
Prefer systems that have been used with real money for a long time, that say who can upgrade them, and that do not promise a strange yield. New plus high reward plus an admin key is how these stories start.
Do not look for a recipe. The recipe is how the next person gets hurt. Knowing the shape is enough to walk away.
Three losses, and no method
People have lost deposits because a contract did the steps in a bad order, trusted a price it should not have, or let someone borrow the votes or the assets for one moment and take the pool. The DAO in 2016 is the first of those: a call withdrew more than the authors meant, the chain recorded it, and the community then argued in public. Mango Markets in 2022 is the second. The CFTC charged a trader with taking more than 110 million dollars after a price the protocol trusted moved. Ronin, the same year, is the third shape wearing a bridge: a small set of keys was enough to approve a withdrawal of hundreds of millions of dollars. The US Treasury tied that theft to the Lazarus Group. This page names the losses. It does not describe the calls.
Write-ups of these events often include steps, because the writers are selling a postmortem or a detective story. This course will not repeat the steps. A recipe is how the next person gets used, either as the attacker or as the depositor who funded the prize. Knowing the shape is enough to walk away from a contract you cannot explain: where the price comes from, whether one transaction can borrow the votes, whether nine keys with five at one company are really nine.
The links below are the public record of the losses and of the charges. They are not a workbook. If a page you open starts listing function calls, close it. You already have the lesson.
Read it yourself
These links are the record. They are not a recommendation, and they are not instructions. A news story or a court paper can still be wrong about a detail. The check does not change because a famous name is in the story.
Apply the check
Open a question. The line is about this topic. It is not a verdict that anything is safe.
The person who took the deposits. Not a student.
The contract's authors, who chose what it would trust.
The contract, once the bad condition was met. There is often no undo.
Check yourself
Should this course show you the steps of an attack?
No. It names what people lost, so you can refuse the setup.
After this you can walk away from a brand-new pool that pays a strange yield and can be upgraded.