Titano Finance Evil Contractors

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Titano Finance

Titano is a project which offers an automatic staking protocol, meaning that tokens are automatically staked without the user having to take any action. They used a custom smart contract hot wallet, which was developed by a third party. A backdoor was left in the contract during the deployment, which allowed the third party contractor to later mint unlimited tokens. They exercised this ability. The Titano project was ultimately able to tie them to real world identities through blockchain analysis, at which point the funds were completely returned. A $10k bounty was issued for information that assisted in the recovery.

This is a global/international case not involving a specific country.

About Titano Finance

"Titano Finance is transforming DeFi with the Titano Autostaking Protocol (TAP) that delivers the industry’s highest fixed APY, rebasing rewards every 30 minutes, and a simple buy-hold-earn system that grows your portfolio in your wallet, fast."

"The Best Auto-Staking & Auto-Compounding Protocol in Crypto. Highest Fixed APY – 102,483%. First Automatic Staking and Compounding in Your Wallet! Get Rewards Every 30 Minutes / 48 Times Daily!"

"Titano itself is original code and is extremely secure against external and even internal exploits. In fact, the code behind Titano is far more secure than most other contracts out there."

"The code used to create Titano PLAY, however, was based on pre-existing code that had been employed successfully in other projects for years. Since the code was preexisting and already working, we hired and contracted a developer to assist with implementing it into Titano. This contractor had been recommended to us and was fully public on a well known freelancing website. We had no reason to not trust him and our working relationship was smooth and effective."

"To prepare and deploy the PLAY contract, the Titano Finance team relied on a contractor who had experience with working with this third-party code on other projects. The contractor was responsible for deploying the smart contract to BSC and then transferred ownership to the Titano Finance team."

"Titano is in the onboarding process of Certik." "A preliminary report has been shared with the project team for their review. Once the review is complete, our security experts will work with the team to remediate the findings."

On February 13th, Titano Finance was "incredibly excited to announce that today we hit a magnificent milestone for Titano Finance. Today, we surpassed a $100m market cap and we now have over 40k Titano holders."

"Over the past month of its operation, we have seen no vulnerabilities and as you who have participated have seen, it has performed perfectly in a real world situation with thousands of active users."

"On February 14, the Titano Finance project on the BSC chain was attacked." "On Monday 14th February 2022 a hacker was able to steal 4828 BNB from the PLAY protocol." "Titano PLAY was hacked today. Titano, DID NOT mint any tokens. The PLAY contract was compromised, by a malicious hacker who created more Titano Tickets."

"Titano PLAY was hacked today. Titano, DID NOT mint any tokens. The PLAY contract was compromised, by a malicious hacker who created more Titano Tickets."

"As most of you are aware, there was a hack today of Titano PLAY. It took us all by surprise because the protocol for the project is complicated and layered providing strong protection for us. We went through our usual security checks and only released it to the community when we were sure it was working flawlessly and was totally secure." "Needless to say this is disheartening and in addition to being angry, we are also taking every action to apprehend this person and have our funds returned."

"In the meantime we have stopped Titano PLAY until we have removed any vulnerabilities in it. We do not have a timeline to accomplish this, however we will work as quickly as possible while making sure all vulnerabilities are removed."

"And now a note to the hacker. First, we know who you and where you are, and we will be relentless in pursuing you. We will give you 24 hours to return the funds you stole with no penalty. If you do not, the deal is off the table. You should know that we and many of our 42,000 strong Titan community have amazing contacts and a long reach, and we will not let you rest because of what you have done. We consider your actions not just an attack on Titano and our more than community, but against all of the DeFi companies who are committed to helping people to change their lives and find financial freedom. Do the right thing and return the money or you will never be able to rest easy."

According to the official Titano Finance investigation, “The problem arose when we trusted a contractor to deploy the PLAY contract. Although ownership was transferred back to us after deployment, it was the same deployer wallet that allowed two days ago from our PLAY Hacking that steals all Titano in the protocol.”

"However, as security researcher Chiachih Wu pointed out, the smart contract code included a statement that allowed either the smart contract owner or the deployer of the contract to set the PrizeStrategy for the pool. The Titano hack was allegedly performed by the contractor using the original deployment address. The contractor was able to exploit these privileges to steal 4828.7 BNB from the contract."

"The attackers made a total of 4,828.7 BNB, or about $190w." "The attackers – alleged to be contractors hired by the crypto project – stole 4828.7 BNB worth over $1.9 million."

"The silver lining to this story is that we have been able to pin point the exact people behind this attack. We have ALL of their information and will pursue them. We are working with some excellent members of our community, developers, legal experts, and more and our evidence is strong. The hackers have now been linked back to KYC’d accounts and we will reach out to those exchanges too."

"The Titano team immediately pursued a course of action that allowed us to pinpoint the source of the exploit, identify the individuals involved and then open a dialog with these people. We applied maximum pressure and maintained consistent contact with the hackers in the hours and days since the incident." "During this period the team has been under considerable stress with FUD coming from external parties and even threats of violence coming from the hackers but we persisted."

"All Hacked Funds have been successfully recovered! We have amazing news to report. Our efforts in pursuing the hackers who stole the money from Titano PLAY have been fruitful and all stolen funds have now been returned." "Today however, our efforts bore fruit and the total amount taken in the hack was returned to Titano."

"We would also like to acknowledge one Titan in particular, sonnysege which provided us with critical information very early on, confirming our suspicions as to the identify of the hacker. The fact we were able to confront our hacker so quickly will have made a big impact and for this reason, the developers would like to award him/her with $10k from our team funds."

"In the meantime, the full amount will be returned to the community and added to the liquidity pool to increase price support and stability. This will happen after the token migration happens." "We are happy to announce that we are now ready to return the tokens to every Titan whose tokens were lost in the Titano PLAY hack." "PLAY depositors do not need to take any actions. The tokens will appear in your wallets."

This is a global/international case not involving a specific country.

The background of the exchange platform, service, or individuals involved, as it would have been seen or understood at the time of the events.

Include:

• Known history of when and how the service was started.
• What problems does the company or service claim to solve?
• What marketing materials were used by the firm or business?
• Audits performed, and excerpts that may have been included.
• Business registration documents shown (fake or legitimate).
• How were people recruited to participate?
• Public warnings and announcements prior to the event.

Don't Include:

• Any wording which directly states or implies that the business is/was illegitimate, or that a vulnerability existed.
• Anything that wasn't reasonably knowable at the time of the event.

There could be more than one section here. If the same platform is involved with multiple incidents, then it can be linked to a main article page.

The Reality

This sections is included if a case involved deception or information that was unknown at the time. Examples include:

• When the service was actually started (if different than the "official story").
• Who actually ran a service and their own personal history.
• How the service was structured behind the scenes. (For example, there was no "trading bot".)
• Details of what audits reported and how vulnerabilities were missed during auditing.

What Happened

The specific events of the loss and how it came about. What actually happened to cause the loss and some of the events leading up to it.

Key Event Timeline - Titano Finance Evil Contractors

Date	Event	Description
February 13th, 2022 9:49:09 PM MST	Main Event	Expand this into a brief description of what happened and the impact. If multiple lines are necessary, add them here.

Total Amount Lost

The total amount lost has been estimated at $1,949,000 USD.

How much was lost and how was it calculated? If there are conflicting reports, which are accurate and where does the discrepancy lie?

Immediate Reactions

How did the various parties involved (firm, platform, management, and/or affected individual(s)) deal with the events? Were services shut down? Were announcements made? Were groups formed?

Ultimate Outcome

What was the end result? Was any investigation done? Were any individuals prosecuted? Was there a lawsuit? Was any tracing done?

A bounty of $10,000 USD was paid for the discovery.

Total Amount Recovered

The total amount recovered has been estimated at $1,949,000 USD.

What funds were recovered? What funds were reimbursed for those affected users?

Ongoing Developments

What parts of this case are still remaining to be concluded?

Individual Prevention Policies

No specific policies for individual prevention have yet been identified in this case.

For the full list of how to protect your funds as an individual, check our Prevention Policies for Individuals guide.

Platform Prevention Policies

Policies for platforms to take to prevent this situation have not yet been selected in this case.

For the full list of how to protect your funds as a financial service, check our Prevention Policies for Platforms guide.

Regulatory Prevention Policies

No specific regulatory policies have yet been identified in this case.

For the full list of regulatory policies that can prevent loss, check our Prevention Policies for Regulators guide.