Reserve Exploit: Live Updates
We are investigating a coordinated exploit by several bad actors in the space against the HERD.
Before we get into the details, just know that the quality of your enemies will improve with success.
TO START
We have not been administratively hacked and nothing has changed on the network from a contract perspective. Please reference the past activity of the ELEPHANT Deployer to confirm:
https://bscscan.com/address/0x16e76819ac1f0dfbecc48dfe93b198830e0c85eb
Several smart contracts and resources were used to automate an attack against the ELEPHANT Treasury. We are currently investigating the specific transactions and attack vectors used to remedy the situation in the short term.
ACTION WE ARE TAKING NOW
We are pausing the Reserve which will disable Stampede and the minting/redeeming of TRUNK.
We are working with our partners at Certik / InsurAce to investigate this attack.
ACTION YOU SHOULD TAKE
— — DO NOT SELL — -
— — DO NOT ANSWER DMS — -
— — YOUR FUNDS ARE SAFU — -
The base layer of the Elephant Money platform is secure and has stood up to this challenge. The exploit of the Reserve will be addressed and we will move on.
— -
For all future communication during this triage process please got to: https://medium.com/elephant-money
Update 1
The exploit was executed in a single smart contract tx located here:
https://bscscan.com/tx/0xec317deb2f3efdc1dbf7ed5d3902cdf2c33ae512151646383a8cf8cbcd3d4577
We are working with our partners to investigate this…
Update 2
The ELEPHANT Reserve has been officially paused. Here are the details:
- https://bscscan.com/tx/0x662607f934518ff5c0255381a95a7e90d5783eb423ef3a51902d4c0dd5df65ae
- https://bscscan.com/tx/0x925f5a1313f4db40fe9e4023ce5671c6aaa6af74a87671bffb2f9364f6f87e80
- Stampede and the Reserve will no longer function when trying to execute transactions. If Metamask says the TX will fail it will and you will burn BNB unnecessarily.
- You will continue to earn Stampede rewards throughout this process. Reserve reward pools will be adjusted down from the inflated numbers created by the attack. TRUNK Rewards and Performance pools will be adjusted to $2.5M and $500K respectively.
Update 3
The official loss from this exploit is 27,416 BNB, valued at $11.2M at the time of writing.
Update 4
In recent design sessions for the next release of Stampede this particular exploit would have been fully covered as we switched to using PCS as the primary redemption mechanism, fully insulating the ELEPHANT Treasury. We are currently at v4.2 of Stampede and the Reserve, which has performed better than any previous version and uses PCS for redemptions conditionally.
It took a significant amount of capital to bust through the systems defenses. Over $261M in volume. Just know that we are approaching unstoppable tokenomics and that there are those out there that will stop at nothing to prevent Cashflow for All from happening.
Elephant Money has defended against all manner of attacks since its inception a year ago. This exploit got through and its delivery was planned and timed. We are building this solution for generations to come, we must be tested.
On a final note, I would be wary of investing in or supporting any auditor, dev team, investor, etc. that is “HIGH FIVING!” at the expense of the SHARED community. Every time bad actors win it hurts the entire space. There are prominent teams that were aware of weaknesses and stood by and did nothing at your expense. Even after I and other community members asked them to disclose. It is not my job to call them out explicitly, but you know who they are.
Update 5
The BUSD Treasury has been tapped to rebuild the ELEPHANT Treasury which has always been the plan for Stampede v5. In the upcoming version of Stampede / Reserve the ELEPHANT Treasury will be used to payout yield ONLY. Redemption will be handled through PCS exclusively.
$2.5M is BUSD has been deployed to the ELEPHANT Deployer with another $2.5M ready to be deployed after community members have a chance to DCA in. The exploit will be patched and we will move on.
The ELEPHANT Deployer will forward funds to the ELEPHANT Treasury once a viable EMERGENCY patch is in place. Here are the latest ELEPHANT Deployer buys for review:
https://bscscan.com/address/0x16e76819ac1f0dfbecc48dfe93b198830e0c85eb#tokentxns
During the aftermath of this attack you will win big if you HOLD/DCA ELEPHANT. You will only lose money if you SELL. DO NOT SELL, YOU WILL REALIZE UNNECESSARY LOSSES. This was an attack on our liquidity, but we have built a large war chest… YES, WE ARE IN A FIGHT FOR CHANGE.
Update 6
Summary of the exploit provided by https://peckshield.com
XJ (PeckShield), [4/13/22 11:59 AM]
Forced investment (yDAI-like hack)
— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — -
tx: https://bscscan.com/tx/0xec317deb2f3efdc1dbf7ed5d3902cdf2c33ae512151646383a8cf8cbcd3d4577
H1: 0xbceda90b2880fea5d511d54716229145508996da
C1: 0xd520a3b47e42a1063617a9b6273b206a07bdf834
1. Flashloan 130K WBNB/1K WBNB/91M BUSD from Pancake Pairs USDT_WBNB/Cake_WBNB/USDT_BUSD respectively
2. Swap 131K WBNB -> 37,972,517,886,502.22 ELEPHANT (to make WBNB imbalanced)
3. C1.mint with 91M BUSD
- Mint 90,124,650 TRUNK to H1
- Swap 22.5M BUSD -> 48.8K WNBB -> 3,050,142,559,411.813 ELEPHANT (to an embalanced pool)
- Deposit 3,050,142,559,411.813 ELEPHANT to Treasury_af09
. Swap 250,000,000,000.0 ELEPHANT -> 4956 WBNB
. AddLiquidity 250,000,000,000.0 ELEPHANT + 4956 WBNB -> 1087 Cake-LP_ELEPHANT_WBNB
- Mint 910,407 TRUNK to C1
- AddLiquidity 910,407 TRUNK + 902,123 BUSD -> 880,609 Cake-LP_TRUNK_BUSD
4. Swap 34,244,200,239,512.18 ELEPHANT -> 163,782 WBNB (to profit from reverse swap)
45,000.0 TRUNK -> 44,156 BUSD
5. C1.redeem with 90M TRUNK
- Burn 90M TRUNK
- Withdraw 66.8M BUSD to H1, 64,450B ELEPHANT to H1
6. Swap 140,806B ELEPHANT -> 21,701 BNB, 28,268 WBNB -> 12M BUSD
Update 7
The exploit triggered a 2% graveyard rebalance due to high volume, $262M, which sold an additional 10T tokens at the bottom: https://bscscan.com/tx/0xcbc654cba0dfe0a455991372716af0f3fb32e497b054c83881fbf3d78d0c0be9

Update 8
Forensic Tracking Analysis provided by https://peckshield.com:

Update 9
Strategic buyback of TRUNK has begun to fund the upcoming TRUNK Treasury. $391K of TRUNK has been purchased to date by the ELEPHANT Deployer:
https://bscscan.com/address/0x16e76819ac1f0dfbecc48dfe93b198830e0c85eb#tokentxns
Update 10
Here are some recommendations from a code reviewer at our partner InsurAce.
Hello @bankteller,
After skimming thru the code and transaction history, here are some thoughts we hope would help. Some bullets might be generic for flash loan cases.
1. hacker takes flash loan and buys elephant token.
2. minting trunk internally will buy back elephant and meanwhile add liquidity depth for both elephant and trunk.
3. taking profit by selling elephant token and trunk token.
4. redeem trunk and clean up.
Developers can add some guard into code to break flash loan loops.
1. adding anti re-entrance checks in smart contract level, so that some key functions cannot be chained into one tx by other smart contract.
2. convert redeem to delay_redeem by adding a timelock, this will break flash loan loop too.
3. saw that there are some code directly integrated with external swap to use as the oracle for price querying. it’s better to utilize some chain link price feed or some TWAP based price to smooth the impact when external swap pool got manipulated.
4. adjust the price slippage check to squeeze the profit margin.
5. Token flow wise, seems when redeeming TRUNK, you plan to utilize the liquidity in PancakeSwap to avoid burning TRUNK, another thought might be helpful is, you can build single sided liquidity on your platform instead of using two sided pool like PCS, single sided liquidity pool will play like a guard between BUSD pool and external liquidity like PCS, but still, depends on what you want to achieve for the token flow and tokenomics, things might adjust a bit.
Would like to hear more from you in case of any. and we could together review the code after your team polish the fix. Cheers.
Many of these features were in planning for v5 of Stampede / Reserve. In particular 2 , 3 , and 5.
Update 11
We have identified the hacker’s addresses on ETH where funds were sent. These will be monitored closely by our partners and law enforcement. Here are the addresses as follows:
- 0x8B7245C398E6a42b0475099b878D21101eF58471 472 ETH
- 0x21904B8C9Fa6D7da88E10Ae9e4493B1464A3D56b 472 ETH
- 0xfa2092b35546ef08cb736f1b4f26cc98a949e6f7 337 ETH
- 0x8fac3349Bc2592337bc61d419E12AE2A18Fe6577 339.9 ETH
- 0x2d3F27B6c8CAc4ba8B5D715D25AfcA03c05D0308 331.7 ETH
- 0xEB1521aEf54436F31007D4a9378e1ceBc8cB44d9 180.4 ETH
- 0x39C15D6dbc47F0EAB0fEE2469422E4A109352d54 473.4 ETH
- 0x219395018CfB8e337f2c79010Cd70144Eb16F500 472.1 ETH
- 0x3447d546d18a66Ab99Fe9edca23B6d8ce5c0B0a3 392.2 ETH
We will start to explore options to reclaim these funds.
In a best case win-win scenario the hacker would receive a 10% commission on the funds exploited as a bug bounty, returning the remaining 90% of ETH to the ELEPHANT Deployer address on Ethereum:
0x16E76819aC1f0dfBECc48dFE93B198830e0C85EB
In exchange for their service Elephant Money would not pursue criminal action against the hacker. Furthermore, Elephant Money will seek to standardize this bounty process on a go forward basis.
Update 12
Our partner Certik put out an alert regarding the flashloan Reserve exploit. You can review it here:















