September 07, 2022
By Anjali Kochhar
Non-fungible token (NFT) watchdog Rug Pull Finder focused on identifying Web3 frauds has fallen into a smart contract exploit itself.
According to the NFT investigator’s post on Twitter, two people exploited a technical flaw in the project during the free mint stage pilfering 450 NFTs out of a possible 1,221 which were intended to be limited to one per wallet.
As per the Twitter post, the company’s smart contract had a flaw that saw the code exploited, allowing the bandits to allocate more than the allowed number of NFTs.
The company made moves to rectify the situation soon after the exploit, offering one of the people involved a deal to pay them a bounty of 2.5 Ether (ETH) (worth $3,944.68 at the time of writing) to recover 330 of the NFTs, which was accepted.
The watchdog group admitted that the exploit occurred as they didn’t heed warnings from an unknown source about the potential flaws sent 30 minutes before the mint went live.
“After reviewing it with three different dev teams, we did not believe the credibility of the information sent to us… We were clearly wrong, and we are truly, truly sorry.”
The NFT investigator pointed to digital blockchain creative agency Doxxed Media as having handled all the art and contract work, and they “did not have our team audit it, or an independent 3rd party.”
The irony of the exploit has not been missed by the crypto community, with some praising the NFT investigator for admitting to its fault. In contrast, others have questioned how a company specialising in detecting smart contract vulnerabilities didn’t conduct the proper checks on its own project.
After the shaky start, however, RPF has managed to get their NFT project back on track.
About the author
Anjali Kochhar covers cryptocurrency stories in India as well as globally. Having been in the field of media and journalism for over three years now, she has developed a sharp news sense and works hard to present information that goes beyond the obvious. She is an avid reader and loves writing on a wide range of subjects.
