Telegram trading tool Unibot suffers exploit

Blockchain security firms noted that the funds stolen from Unibot were transferred to the privacy tool Tornado Cash in laundering attempt

by Shalini Nagarajan /

October 31, 2023 06:25 am

Parilov/Shutterstock, modified by Blockworks

Unibot, a well-known Telegram bot for Uniswap trading, suffered an approval vulnerability on Tuesday, resulting in a loss of tokens valued above $600,000.

A newly deployed contract was compromised, leading to the loss of several meme coins belonging to users.

The firm pinpointed the problem as a “token approval exploit” from its new router, which led them to momentarily halt the router to address the issue.

“We experienced a token approval exploit from our new router and have paused our router to contain the issue,” the team said on X.

“Any funds lost due to the bug on our new router will be compensated. Your keys and wallets are safe.”

PeckShield initially detected the exploit, revealing that the attacker transferred the stolen tokens to Uniswap and moved the funds to crypto mixer Tornado Cash.

The attacker appears to have exchanged the tokens for about 355.75 ETH, equal to around $640,000, according to the blockchain security firm.

Meanwhile, analytics firm Scopescan pegged the size of the exploit at $560,000.

While inquiries continue, Scopescan and Beosin recommended that impacted users revoke permissions for the compromised contract and move their assets to a safer wallet.

SlowMist, another security firm, stated that the attack was a result of missing essential parameter verifications, allowing the attacker to move tokens that users had authorized for the Unibot contract.

The UNIBOT token was last down nearly 30% at $44.01 as of 5:20 a.m. ET on Monday, data from Blockworks Research showed.

The team expects to provide a detailed update once the investigation is complete, with a Telegram admin mentioning a potential update in the upcoming 24 hours.

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