SpiritSwap GoDaddy DNS Compromise

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SpiritSwap Logo/Homepage

Decentralized exchange SpiritSwap used and trusted GoDaddy for their domain name services. One day, an attacker managed to convince GoDaddy to modify the hostnames of the domain, directing the domain name to their own server, where they hosted a malicious replica of the SpiritSwap website. Users who tried to interact with the SpiritSwap website would be interacting with the malicious version, which routed their funds to the attacker's wallet. In total, the attacker was able to take $72,000 worth of funds before the domain could be fully rerouted back to the proper server. The SpiritSwap team has put together a reimbursement fund for all affected users.

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

About SpiritSwap

"Embrace your DeFi SPIRIT. The SpiritSwap protocol captures the essence of everything Defi 2.0 on the Fantom network, delivering a complete hub for trading, invest regularly, farming and reward sharing."

"SpiritSwap is a decentralized exchange (DEX) on the Fantom Opera Chain. SpiritSwap's design was originally based on the Uniswap constant-product automated market maker (AMM).

With the recent Uniswap V3 license expiry sparking a wave of innovation and forks in the crypto community, SpiritSwap is integrating Algebra into its protocol to enhance efficiency and capitalize on crypto assets. The integration of Algebra's codebase offers SpiritSwap and its users a unique advantage, setting it apart from Uniswap V3 and other DEXs. Algebra's technology promises to redefine the DeFi space, offering market participants new opportunities and efficiencies not available in traditional DEX models."

"Back in May, 2022 a GoDaddy employee was social engineered to take over SpiritSwap and QuickSwap domains. Unsuspecting users approved transfers to malicious contracts advertised on evil clones of the original websites."

"The team became aware that something was amiss via alerts from the moderator team and began investigating right away. (special thanks to our mods for being so active and vigilant, this is testament to how amazing you guys are!)"

"After spending 7 hours on various calls, the team was able to secure a higher point of contact to escalate the issue to GoDaddy.

During this time, the team sent an email explicitly highlighting the severity of the situation, detailing the loss of funds and pleading with GoDaddy that the longer they delayed verification of team ownership, the more funds would be liable for loss.

Ironically, the attacker was able to socially engineer the team at GoDaddy easier than SpiritSwap was able to verify its authority over the account. It is understood that GoDaddy has processes in place to follow, however this was not ideal given the urgency of the situation."

"1. As a precautionary measure, we have now changed domain providers to a company the team feels have better security layers and won’t be as easily socially engineered. The migration is now complete. With this new domain provider we have upgraded our package to a business tier which gives us a higher level of security and priority support in the event that we require their assistance. We have also spoken with this domain provider to ensure additional layers of security are implemented on their end.

2. The team has composed a war chest of strategies to throw barriers in the way of other possible attackers. For security reasons we will obviously not be disclosing these publicly.

3. As part of V2, the team is taking steps to make sure that our frontend interacts with a middleware which interacts with web3, so if a hacker were to gain control of the frontend the middleware would prevent any manipulation of web3 calls.

4. We are learning from top end protocols like Uniswap on best practices for decentralized hosting of the frontend to mitigate risks of such an attack being possible in the future."

"All affected users will be compensated in full for the swaps that they lost."

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 - SpiritSwap GoDaddy DNS Compromise

Date	Event	Description
May 13th, 2022 1:14:00 PM MDT	DNS Redirected	The hacker began redirecting users’ funds to his wallet as the DNS redeployment was put into effect.
May 13th, 2022 1:32:00 PM MDT	Moderation Alerts	The team became aware that something was amiss via alerts from the moderator team and began investigating right away.
May 13th, 2022 2:03:00 PM MDT	Warning Message	The development team instructed our community manager to post a warning message to our community while the developers focused on investigating further. It was initially speculated that our cloud provider might have been compromised, however in an attempt to sign into the domain registry it became apparent that the DNS settings had been tampered with.
May 13th, 2022 2:15:00 PM MDT	Contact Attempts	Non-stop efforts were made to contact GoDaddy and regain ownership of the SpiritSwap domain.
May 13th, 2022 3:33:00 PM MDT	Discord/Twitter Notices	After adequate time had passed to help us understand the situation and the attacker’s actions, an announcement was posted on Discord and Twitter, updating the community with the details that were available at that time.
May 13th, 2022 3:55:00 PM MDT	Stalling Attempt	A decision was made to disable swapping through the routers to try and stall the attacker from taking anyone’s funds. At this point, the loss of funds sat at around $18,000. This was clearly only a temporary measure, but given there were no other options this was the only preventative measure we could deploy while waiting for support from GoDaddy.
May 13th, 2022 4:19:00 PM MDT	DEX Rerouting	The attacker had realized the routers had been disabled and redeployed the swap contracts to use another DEX’s routers instead.
May 14th, 2022 1:19:00 AM MDT	Mudit Gupta DDOS Guard Tweet	Mudit Gupta requests for DDOSGuard to stop serving SpiritSwap, QuickSwap, and HoneySwap, and calls them all phishing websites.
May 14th, 2022 10:30:00 AM MDT	Domain Control Regained	(Saturday the following day) GoDaddy confirmed that the compromised account had been recovered and reestablished with the domain back in the control of SpiritSwap. The development team immediately began propagating the site, at this point the attacker had no control over the domain and could not make any further changes.
May 14th, 2022 11:30:00 AM MDT	Propagation Complete	The site had propagated globally so no interactions could happen through the spoofed site. It is at this exact time the attacker had realized he lost total control and began converting all funds to BNB and bridged BNB over to Binance Smart Chain.
May 14th, 2022 2:26:00 PM MDT	Site Live Again Notice	After taking time to assess and unlock the router, it was announced that the site was live again and safe to use. Over the period of the attack the attacker secured a total of 252 BNB ($71,763 at time of hack).
May 16th, 2022 6:07:06 PM MDT	PostMortem Published	SpiritSwap publishes a postmortem on Medium.
June 17th, 2022	PermaWeb Article	A PermaWeb article covers the attacks on QuickSwap, and mentions attacks on SpiritSwap, and HoneySwap.
June 28th, 2022 10:52:05 PM MDT	Blockchain Thread Intelligence	Blockchain Thread Intelligence includes special mention of a GoDaddy phishing attack in their newsletter.

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 $72,000 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

The total amount recovered has been estimated at $72,000 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.