WorkQuest ChainSwap Breach

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WorkQuest

WorkQuest is an online marketplace which enables the effective hiring and payment of remote employees through a blockchain application, with a public reputation system. Their Work Quest tokens used ChainSwap to exist on multiple blockchains, which required some funds to be stored in the smart contract hot wallet.

The ChainSwap bridge was hacked, and the attacker was able to obtain tokens from multiple projects, which were sold. While multiple sources have included the WorkQuest project as one of the victims, it's unclear how WorkQuest was affected and what actions WorkQuest took, if any.

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

About WorkQuest

"Integrating DeFi and Recruitment" with a "[g]lobal end-to-end jobs marketplace powered on smart-contracts."

"WorkQuest is the online Marketplace and decentralized Payment Provider connecting employers with employees anywhere in the world powered by Smart Contracts governed by DAO. WorkQuest will have Mobile Applications making available working anywhere and use its own Work Net Blockchain and Wallet." "The platform incentivizes employers and employees to deal honestly and prudently using its Rating System with all the feedback is stored in a blockchain. As platforms act as a facilitator of transactions between employer and the employee, different DeFi products available for platform participants, such as Savings, Retirement & Disability Insurance."

"The Work Quest team discovered that there was a massive opportunity existing in the labor market. Employers’ problem finding the right personnel with the right mix of skills has always coaxed them to fall prey for the low-level quality services. On the other hand, job seekers with the right skills find it challenging to find good employers. It’s quite evident that there’s a huge difference in the distribution of skills worldwide."

"Work Quest creates an international platform that aims to solve this through a bridge. This bridge connects both the employees and employers by using blockchain technology and smart contracts. Work Quest’s ecosystem consists of a payment system that uses both a stable coin and the Work Quest token (WQT). The token, WQT, is used as the voting token in the Work Quest DAO. Holders of the WQT are responsible for making any changes voted for in the Work net blockchain."

"The Work Quest DAO landscapes tokens act as its core property, letting organizations in any industry spend. Also, such tokens act as reward systems explicit to activities within the platform. About the Work Quest platform, the users investing in Work Quest DAO obtain all voting rights. In turn, it impacts the way the network runs."

"Binance Smart Chain has become one of the leading and most popular blockchain networks out there. WorkQuest team is glad to bring the $WQT token to BSC in order to make trading of $WQT as convenient, as possible. We are excited to announce that we have partnered with ChainSwap to make the $WQT token cross-chain between ETH and BSC."

"ChainSwap is a bridge protocol that links the Ethereum and Binance Smart Chain (BSC) blockchains." "It supports Binance Smart Chain, Ethereum, Polygon, and Huobi Eco Chain." "The ChainSwap hacker identified and exploited a vulnerability in the ChainSwap smart contract. This vulnerability enabled them to steal and mint new tokens for various protocols that were using the bridge to trade across Ethereum and BSC."

Investigation by ChainSwap revealed "a bug in the token cross-chain quota code. The on-chain swap bridge quota is automatically increased by the signature node, which is intended to be more decentralized without manual control. However, due to a logical flaw in code, this led to an exploit by allowing invalid addresses which weren’t whitelisted to automatically increase the amount."

"The attacker managed to take control of the projects’ BSC contracts by exploiting ChainSwap. The attacker minted tokens directly to their address, then sold them on BSC’s most popular decentralized exchange, PancakeSwap." "[T]he attacker used the PancakeSwap exchange to convert the stolen tokens to WBNB, DAI, and other tokens."

"Chainswap said it had already repurchased a small amount of the affected tokens from the market and returned the contract wallet. The rest will be paid out in full by the Chainswap vault." "ChainSwap team has now prepared and executed a compensation plan in consensus with the affected projects." "In order to bring everybody a more rigorous, efficient bridge, the next development model of ChainSwap will be adjusted to ensure maximum safety."

"For now, Chainswap has temporarily closed its cross-chain bridge." "ChainSwap worked with the police and OKEx to identify the attackers, and managed to negotiate the recovery of Corra and Rai tokens. An initial email with the attackers suggested the attackers return $1 million."

“Sorry for the trouble, you sound genuinely like great people but money is money,” the attackers of the earlier exploit told ChainSwap.

"ChainSwap is excited to announce that we have successfully integrated with Anyswap and Chainswap bridge is now live. We thank our community for its patience during the last few weeks."

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 - WorkQuest ChainSwap Breach
Date	Event	Description
July 11th, 2021 12:00:00 AM	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 is unknown.

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?

Total Amount Recovered

There do not appear to have been any funds recovered in this case.

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?

Prevention Policies

Theoretically, decentralized finance will eventually result in hackers having exploited every vulnerability that exists. However, it's impossible to know when that will occur and if a contract is truly secure, as opposed to there still being an exploit that just hasn't been noticed yet. For any complex smart contract, it's impossible to prove security and plenty of fully audited contracts have been exploited.

Platforms should, generally, be prepared for the full loss of all assets stored in hot wallets (including smart contracts). Assets that do not need to be accessed quickly should be stored securely in a simple offline multi-signature wallet.