As I sit here, sipping my tea and pondering the intricacies of the digital realm, I am reminded of the age-old adage: “pride comes before a fall.” And what a fall it was, my friends, for the esteemed Cetus Protocol, whose automated market maker logic was exploited to the tune of $223 million. A post-mortem by the intrepid blockchain security firm, Dedaub, revealed the culprit to be a critical overflow flaw – a subtle but critical flaw, much like the whispered secrets of a Russian aristocrat.
“This incident represents one of the most significant DeFi exploits in recent history, caused by a subtle but critical flaw in “overflow” protection,” Dedaub said in its report, with all the gravitas of a Tolstoy novel. And indeed, it is a tale of woe, of hubris and of the unbridled power of mathematics.
Dedaub explained that the flaw involved an “overflow” in the math used by Cetus’s automated market maker, where a miswritten condition failed to properly handle the most significant bits of large numerical inputs and “didn’t produce the intended result.” Ah, the perils of unchecked ambition! Instead of rejecting oversized values, the system truncated them, causing the output to appear much smaller than it should have. A clever trick, indeed, but one that ultimately proved to be the protocol’s undoing.
This allowed the attacker to deposit just a single token while the protocol mistakenly credited them with an enormous liquidity position. They then used that position to withdraw large amounts of real assets from the pools, leaving a trail of digital devastation in their wake.
According to Dedaub, a similar vulnerability had been flagged in early 2023 by blockchain security firm Ottersec during an audit of the protocol’s codebase when it was deployed on Aptos. Ah, the warnings that went unheeded! However, after the code was later ported to the Sui network, the underlying issue still remained. Although developers attempted to implement safeguards, the overflow check was flawed, allowing the same type of exploit to slip through unnoticed. A classic case of “closing the barn door after the horse has bolted,” as the saying goes.
“This incident shows why edge cases in DeFi can’t be ignored,” Dedaub warned, with the gravity of a Russian winter. It urged developers to verify overflow protection manually, especially when using large numbers or advanced math. A wise words, indeed, for in the world of DeFi, complacency is a luxury we can ill afford.
Cetus exploit triggered sell-off
Cetus, a leading DEX on the SUI network, was hacked in the early hours of May 22, triggering one of the largest losses in the Sui ecosystem to date. Initial investigations claimed the incident stemmed from an “oracle bug.” Ah, the plot thickens! The exploit led to over $223 million in losses across various liquidity pools, sparking a broad sell-off in related tokens, including SUI and CETUS, which dropped over 40% in the hours after the breach. Memecoins and smaller market cap tokens native to the network saw even steeper losses, with some plunging by over 90%. A veritable bloodbath, indeed!
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2025-05-26 11:25