AutoShark Economic Exploit

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AutoShark

AutoShark was a copy of PancakeBunny, which included an exploit where the market price could be manipulated for profit. An attack used a flash loan to raise a lot of capital for the exploit.

In the end, they did an airdrop of tokens from the development wallet, without minting new tokens.

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

About AutoShark

"AutoShark is a yield optimizer for Automatic Liquidity Acquisition Farms & AMMs on the Binance Smart Chain. It is forked from PancakeBunny, and offers unparalleled access to farming opportunities through the use of superior yield strategies and auto-compounding vaults." "Autoshark was nearly 1:1 fork of PancakeBunny."

"Amidst the numerous rug pulls that have happened over the past month, it will be inevitable that some investors will fall for the scams even if they have a favorite yield optimizer platform to be on. At AutoShark, we make sure to work only with the most established projects so yield farmers can have peace of mind when their assets are with us."

"The DeFi protocol AutoShark Finance on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) was attacked by a lightning loan." "[A]part from copying all the logic, [the development team] also copied the flawed logic responsible for the PancakeBunny hack." "A hacker exploited AutoShark with a flash loan attack to gain 100M Shark tokens. The price of shark tokens dropped 95% after the hacker swapped all shark tokens to BNB." "As a result, the hacker has taken out 2.2k WBNB."

"Exploiter used $36,800,000, 100,000 BNB for the attack, and approximately 2,500 BNB was exploited — $822,800. 100,000,000 SHARK tokens were minted and used to drained all the liquidity in the LP pool because our token market cap was small (only at $2,000,000 approx) SHARK tokens, which are sold immediately via 1inch -> AnySwap."

"No vaults were compromised. All funds are safe except for the dip in SHARK prices. The exploit crashed the price of SHARK from $1.2 to $0.01." "The currency price suffered a flash crash, with a drop of more than 99% at one time, loss of 750,000 USD."

"[T]he AutoShark team [is] almost ready with the relaunch of the[ir] platform." They "have decided to go ahead with WatchPug for a full audit instead of Peckshield." "We are double and triple-checking our codebase."

"We will be issuing a new token $JAWS to migrate and compensate the Original SHARK Holders for lost Market Cap (there were zero losses from our Vaults). The new token, $JAWS, will be distributed to all SHARK and LP Holders."

"We will be airdropping JAWS for SHARK holders/SHARK LP holders together with the launch of the platform. Audited products such as the JAWS for WBNB vault must be released along with the airdrop to avoid the downward selling pressure of the new token." "Airdrops for users who bought and made losses after the exploit will be scheduled at a later date. The original SHARK holders who were there from the start will be prioritized in the first phase of recovery." "Post-exploit buyers will be reimbursed after the full relaunch."

"Words cannot express how thankful we are to have such a supportive community! We promise to do our best for the defi space. Autoshark will continue to provide the best yield in the yield optimiser space!"

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 - AutoShark Economic Exploit

Date	Event	Description
May 24th, 2021	Main Event	Expand this into a brief description of what happened and the impact. If multiple lines are necessary, add them here.

Technical Details

This section includes specific detailed technical analysis of any security breaches which happened. What specific software vulnerabilities contributed to the problem and how were they exploited?

Total Amount Lost

The total amount lost has been estimated at $745,000 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?

General Prevention Policies

In a smart contract environment, the use of a proper price oracle can prevent such price exploits.

In general, an exchange platform could keep funds safer by placing the majority of them in an offline multi-signature arrangement. Smart contracts are effectively open source hot wallets.

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.