Pirate X Pirate Private Key Leak

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Pirate X Pirate

The Pirate X Pirate NFT game suffered a breach that resulted in 212 BNB (~$83k USD) worth of funds being taken. The breach appears to be the result of a private key leak, and very limited details have been published on how the key may have leaked. The company has instead fired their development team and hired external contract auditors.

About Pirate X Pirate

"Pirate X Pirate is a Blockchain gaming platform with a pirate theme. It is a world where you earn through your adventures across the high seas. Recruit your crew, form your fleet, and test your prowess battling against other pirates to earn money. With your fleet, you will participate in building a pirate metaverse with its own self-contained economy."

"The pledge contract of the NFT adventure game Pirate X was attacked. When users deposit their PXP tokens into this contract, their tokens will be transferred to an EOA account. When the user withdraws the tokens, the contract will call "Transferfrom" to transfer these funds back."

"The staking contract of Pirate X @PXPNFTsGame has been attacked. We suspect it's due to the private key leakage (since the attacker leveraged a valid signed message to launch the attack)." "The staking contract of Pirate X Pirate was attacked by an attacker, resulting in the loss of the PXP token. When user deposit their PXP token into this contract, their token will be transferred into an EOA account. The contract will call `Transferfrom` to transfer these funds back when user withdraw their tokens. When users withdraw their funds, they will submit a signature signed by a singer controlled by the project. The attacker provided a valid sign of the external signer and withdraw 9,681,000 PXP tokens."

"A purported hacker breached our $PXP/$GOLD conversion feature and was able to replicate multiple instances of $PXP conversion before selling off, between 21:13–21:14 UTC, a total of $PXP 9,681,000 which is accounted to 0.9681% of the total supply."

"The attacker [sold off] more than 9.6 million $PXP" "The attackers put these tokens on the market and made a profit of about 212 BNB."

"PXP Team has bought back the total of $PXP 9,681,000 which will be returned to the reward pool." "We have decided to dismiss our current developer team and are currently in the process of recruiting a new team to assume the responsibilities."

"To ensure the security of the system and prevent such issue from happening again, we need to temporarily close the conversion feature and have the game codes reviewed by a trusted auditor. We are currently contacting an auditor and will keep you posted once the discussion concluded."

"The past week has been quite harsh following the hacking incident we wish had never happened. We really appreciate the support from all of you who have faith in us and continue on the journey with PXP. Our main focus now is to relaunch the token conversion system as fast and secure as possible. Immediately after our announcement about the incident, we proceeded to have the codes audited and consulted with the auditing party about the time required for their processes. We were informed that it would take at least 20 business days to complete the task, in other words, a whole calendar month."

"The estimated downtime was too long for us to consider the best option given our situation. We finally reached a conclusion to implement our contingency plan that would provide the most secure yet readily available solution in the meantime; The Withdrawal System will require you to submit a withdrawal request (converting $GOLD to $PXP) which will be verified and approved within 24 hours. Once approved, $PXP will be sent to your wallet. Players no longer need to pay gas fees for withdrawal. Players cannot convert $PXP to $GOLD for the time being."

"A hearty thank to all of you who stay on board with us."

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 - Pirate X Pirate Private Key Leak

Date	Event	Description
January 20th, 2022 2:00:00 PM MST	Shinchanieoalerts Interview	Interview with Pirate X Pirate founding team.
March 8th, 2022 2:15:00 PM MST	Test Transaction	What appears to be a smaller test of the exploit. TBD review SlowMist information. This is the date that Pirate X Pirate attributes as the date of the exploit.
March 8th, 2022 3:51:22 PM MST	Exploit Transaction	The Pirate X Pirate smart contract is exploited. "A purported hacker breached our $PXP/$GOLD conversion feature and was able to replicate multiple instances of $PXP conversion before selling off, between 21:13–21:14 UTC, a total of $PXP 9,681,000 which is accounted to 0.9681% of the total supply."
March 9th, 2022 1:27:00 AM MST	BlockSecTeam Twitter Thread	The BlockSecTeam posts an analysis of the exploit on Twitter, suspecting that the private keys of the team have been breached.
March 9th, 2022 8:20:00 AM MST	Sincerest Apologies	Pirate X Pirate tweets promising their sincerest apologies for the recent hacking event and provided a more detailed plan on their Medium. TBD review Medium.
March 10th, 2022 4:00:00 PM MST	Web3IsGoingGreat	The Web3IsGoingGreat picks up the story and shares an article on the situation. TBD story has changed over time?
March 15th, 2022 5:21:00 AM MDT	Community Thank You	Pirate X Pirate releases "[a] hearty thank to all of you who stay on board with us" and provide a link to a Medium article with the schedule going forward. TBD details from Medium.

Total Amount Lost

The total amount lost has been estimated at $83,000 USD.

Pirate X Pirate Smart Contract: Staking Contract: EOA Account:

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?

BlockSecTeam Report

The BlockSetTeam reported about the situation on Twitter.

1/5) The staking contract of Pirate X @PXPNFTsGame has been attacked. We suspect it's due to the private key leakage (since the attacker leveraged a valid signed message to launch the attack).

2/5) The staking contract of Pirate X Pirate (0x6912B19401913F1bd5020b3f59EE986c5792DA54) was attacked by an attacker, resulting in the loss of the PXP token.

3/5) When user deposit their PXP token into this contract, their token will be transferred into an EOA account (0x3b74a9cb5f1399b4a5a02559e67da37d450067b7). The contract will call `Transferfrom` to transfer these funds back when user withdraw their tokens.

4/5) When users withdraw their funds, they will submit a signature signed by a singer controlled by the project. The attacker provided a valid sign of the external signer (0x7435e0e4c4d10988e8821dc4853d1db2eceb176d) and withdraw 9,681,000 PXP tokens.

5/5) The attacker dumped these tokens into the market, got a profit of about 212 BNB.

Sincerest Apologies

The Pirate X Pirate team acknowledged the exploit on Twitter and offered their sincerest apologies to those affected. This linked to a more detailed medium post.

Our sincerest apologies for the hacking incident. The PXP Statement Regarding the Hacking Incident and Remedies is attached below.

Please accept our sincere apologies for the hacking incident recently taking place at 21:13 UTC. A purported hacker breached our $PXP/$GOLD conversion feature and was able to replicate multiple instances of $PXP conversion before selling off, between 21:13–21:14 UTC, a total of $PXP 9,681,000 which is accounted to 0.9681% of the total supply.

Initially, PXP Team is implementing remedial measures as follows:

PXP Team has bought back the total of $PXP 9,681,000 which will be returned to the reward pool.

Such attack could happen due to the team’s utter carelessness to launch the conversion feature despite of its vulnerability. We deeply regret bypassing the inspection that should have been done by a white hat hacker as we intended to roll out the feature long-suspended as fast as we could. We have decided to dismiss our current developer team and are currently in the process of recruiting a new team to assume the responsibilities.

To ensure the security of the system and prevent such issue from happening again, we need to temporarily close the conversion feature and have the game codes reviewed by a trusted auditor. We are currently contacting an auditor and will keep you posted once the discussion concluded.

Finally, PXP Team is truly sorry for the mistakes that caused an uproar among our valued community. You will be informed about the updated plans soon.

Web3IsGoingGreat

Web3IsGoingGreat picked up and ran an article on the situation.

The Pirate X Pirate blockchain gaming platform was exploited, with an attacker selling of more than 9.6 million $PXP. They were able to dump the tokens into the market for a profit of around 212 BNB ($78,000). In a blog post following the incident, Pirate X Pirate wrote, "Such attack could happen due to the team's utter carelessness to launch the conversion feature despite of its vulnerability. We deeply regret bypassing the inspection that should have been done by a white hat hacker as we intended to roll out the feature long-suspended as fast as we could. We have decided to dismiss our current developer team and are currently in the process of recruiting a new team to assume the responsibilities." They also announced that they had bought back the total $PXP that were stolen, and would be undergoing an audit.

Ultimate Outcome

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

A Hearty Thank You

Pirate X Pirate ultimately released a Tweet thanking their community and announcing their plans for the future.

Dear all Pirate Mateys,

A hearty thank to all of you who stay on board with us. After the hacking incident, we have re-planned our schedules. Check out our new updates regarding the new withdrawal system and other features

The past week has been quite harsh following the hacking incident we wish had never happened. We really appreciate the support from all of you who have faith in us and continue on the journey with PXP. Our main focus now is to relaunch the token conversion system as fast and secure as possible. Immediately after our announcement about the incident, we proceeded to have the codes audited and consulted with the auditing party about the time required for their processes. We were informed that it would take at least 20 business days to complete the task, in other words, a whole calendar month.

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?

General Prevention Policies

Clearly, the issue here is that control over the smart contract needs to be in a multi-signature arrangement, to prevent a single individual being exploited or acting maliciously. All key holders need to be trained on how to properly protect their key.

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.