Exploit

How it is used

Common in security reports and the news: a protocol suffers an exploit, an exploit drains a pool, a post-mortem explains the exploit. As a verb, attackers exploit a vulnerability, and a protocol 'was exploited for 30 million dollars'. Writers often prefer exploit to hack when the attacker only used the code as it was written.

Example sentences

1. The bridge exploit drained more than 100 million dollars in a few minutes.

2. Our post-mortem explains how the attacker exploited a rounding error in the contract.

Common collocations

• suffer an exploit
• exploit a vulnerability
• smart contract exploit
• bridge exploit

Related terms

• auditA detailed security review of smart contract code by independent experts, who look for bugs and weaknesses before the code goes live and publish their findings in a report.
• bridgeA service or set of smart contracts that moves tokens or data from one blockchain to another, usually by locking the asset on one chain and issuing an equivalent on the other.
• smart contractA program stored on a blockchain that runs automatically when certain conditions are met. Once deployed it usually cannot be changed, and it can hold and move funds without a middleman.
• hot walletA wallet whose keys are kept on a device connected to the internet, such as a phone app or browser extension. It is convenient for daily use but more exposed to hacking.
• rug pullA scam in which the creators of a crypto project suddenly take investors' money and disappear, for example by removing all the liquidity from a token's trading pool.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

• exploit · Software Engineering
• exploit · Cybersecurity

More terms: Regulation, Security & Risk

• KYC
• AML
• phishing
• 51% attack
• crypto asset
• pump and dump
• MiCA
• travel rule