Vortex ChainSwap Breach

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Vortex DeFi

Vortex DeFi is a service which enables yield management, NFTs, swapping, and insurance. Their token 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, which were sold, lowering the price. It appears that Vortex DeFi plans to continue using ChainSwap, as they announced a new bridge being set up on August 26th.

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

About Vortex DeFi

"Unlock the world Of Decentralized Finance." "Vortex DeFi is a gateway to the world of DeFi, bringing all the DeFi instruments such as yield management, NFT, swapping, and insurance together on one platform, creating a seamless experience for the end-user."

"We aim to bring together leading protocols and platforms to allow honest farmers to leverage the maximum potential of decentralized finance." "Swap assets in an instant with liquidity from multiple decentralised exchanges."

"Vortex DeFi token is now live on ChainSwap. You can bridge VTX to ETH and BSC using ChainSwap!"

"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."

"Dear Vortex DeFi community, as you are aware that today @chain_swap contracts were exploited which impacted multiple projects including us."

"Chainswap’s contracts were attacked by hackers on 10th July, Saturday around 3–4 PM EST. As a result of this exploit, hackers were successful in stealing tokens for more than 10 projects including, Vortex DeFi, Dafi, Option Room, Razor, Nord Finance, Oro, Antimatter, and others. During this process, close to 4 million $VTX tokens were compromised and sold by the hacker on Uniswap."

"Approximately two hours before the @chain_swap hack, close to 4 million $VTX tokens on the Ethereum mainnet came under the control of the hacker through the @chain_swap bridge contract." "Once the tokens came under control, it was sold through Uniswap [in] two transactions causing a massive price crash and removing close to 30–35 eth worth liquidity from the market." "Based on the transactions, it is highly likely that the attacker has sold all the tokens. $VTX can be traded on Pancakeswap and Uniswap."

"Vortex DeFi’s smart contract for $VTX (audited by Zokyo)and the other two staking contracts remain unaffected."

"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 - Vortex 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 has been estimated at $68,000 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?

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.

In this situation, there was luckily not much taken. 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.