DeFi exploit forensic analysis
I rebuild the attack on a protocol or bridge transaction by transaction, identify the root cause and trace the funds. It is what I did as co-author of the forensic analysis of the KelpDAO exploit.
Member of AEPEJU (no. 1556). Barcelona and across Spain.
Fee: tailored quote. See prices
What an exploit forensic analysis is
It is a technical, verifiable reconstruction of how a protocol was attacked, explained so that a judge, an insurer or a board can understand it.
It is not a social media thread or the team's own post-mortem: it is an independent expert report, signed under an oath of objectivity, that separates what is recorded on-chain from what is inferred.
Rebuilding the attack, transaction by transaction
I start from the attacker's transactions and rebuild the full sequence, with every step linked to a public block explorer.
- Preparation: funding of the attacker's addresses and deployment of their contracts.
- Execution: which function was called, with which parameters, and which protocol state was exploited.
- Extraction: how the stolen assets were converted into more liquid ones.
- Exit: bridges, swaps, mixers and exchanges the funds went through.
Root cause: code, configuration or infrastructure
Not every exploit is a code bug, and telling them apart changes who is liable.
It may be a contract bug (reentrancy, arithmetic, access control), an insecure configuration (oracles, verifiers, risk parameters) or a compromise of off-chain infrastructure. In KelpDAO, the contract correctly executed a message it should never have accepted: the failure lay in the infrastructure that verified cross-chain messages.
Real case: the KelpDAO exploit
It is the forensic analysis I co-authored at MigaLabs, and it sums up the method well.
- A compromise of LayerZero Labs' internal verifier RPC nodes, combined with a denial-of-service attack on external providers, led to the attestation of a cross-chain message that did not exist.
- That message released 116,500 rsETH, roughly 294 million dollars, from the custody contract on Ethereum.
- The attacker posted that rsETH as collateral on Aave v3 and Compound v3 and extracted 75,700 ETH in a day and a half.
- The funds were laundered and ended up converted into 1,329 native BTC via THORChain.
- According to its public statement, the Arbitrum Security Council froze 30,766 ETH linked to the attacker.
What I need to get started
The attacker's addresses and the exploit transactions are enough to begin; anything else speeds up the analysis.
- The attacker's addresses and the hashes of the exploit transactions.
- The affected contracts and their technical documentation.
- The team's post-mortem, if there is one, and public communications about the incident.
- The purpose of the report: court, insurer or negotiation, because it changes the approach.
Reports for court, insurers or negotiation
The same analysis serves several purposes, and I tailor the report to each one. I deliver it in English or Spanish for protocols and law firms in any jurisdiction.
- Civil claim or criminal complaint against the attacker or third parties.
- Claim against a crypto risk insurer.
- Defence of the protocol against affected users.
- Technical basis for negotiating a return of funds with the attacker.
Frequently asked questions
Common questions about this kind of report.
Can you testify as an expert witness in Spain?
Yes. I am a court expert in digital forensics, member of AEPEJU no. 1556, and I ratify the report in court, in person or remotely.
Do you work for the protocol or for affected users?
For either party, but never for both in the same matter. The report is objective in both cases, as the law requires.
How is this different from the team's post-mortem?
The post-mortem is written by the affected party; the forensic report is independent, reproducible and signed under oath, and it is designed to be filed as evidence.
Can stolen funds be frozen after an exploit?
Sometimes. Some token issuers and networks have frozen attackers' funds, as the Arbitrum Security Council did in the KelpDAO case; the report shows where the funds are so the request can be made in time.
Do you analyse exploits on L2s and bridges?
Yes. I work with Ethereum and its L2s (Arbitrum, Optimism and Base) and the bridges between them, where many of the most serious attacks happen.
In which languages do you deliver the report?
In English, Spanish, Catalan or French.
Related articles
To understand this kind of case better.
- El exploit de KelpDAO explicado para abogadosQué pasó, cómo se siguieron los fondos hasta Bitcoin y qué enseña para casos reales.
/blog/kelpdao-exploit-explicado - Auditoría o peritaje de smart contractsPor qué una auditoría no es una prueba pericial y cuándo necesitas cada una.
/blog/auditoria-vs-peritaje-smart-contracts
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