A bug in the Monero wallet balance can enable theft from exchanges

How it was found

Summary: A Monero bug (already fixed in master) allows theft from exchanges. This has been exploited again a Monero-derived coin, so the exploit may be underway currently.

Description: (fluffypony: Also please mention you spoke to me and I recommended you put it on HackerOne)

PR #3985 fixed a wallet balance display bug, which seems innocuous enough, but this bug also extends to exchanges: a transfer of, e.g., 1 XMR to an exchange with a duplicated TX pub key will show up on an exchange as a 2 XMR deposit, which then allows the attacker to withdraw 2 XMR from the exchange's wallet. An attacker could exploit this repeatedly to siphon of all of the exchange's balance.

Releases Affected:

• 0.12.2.0, which is currently active and used by exchanges, and likely earlier releases.
• current master and the 0.12.3.0 PR branch have the fix applied

Steps To Reproduce:

1. deliberately double-sign a transaction with the tx pub key, e.g. by doubling the add_tx_pub_key_to_extra(tx, txkey_pub); call in src/cryptonote_core/cryptonote_tx_utils.cpp.
2. Transfer an amount (or send to an exchange)
3. See 2x the transferred amount appear on the recipient wallet (or the exchange).

Supporting Material/References:

• I've notified several other Monero-derived coins that I am in contact with, along with Cryptopia.
• This attack was carried out against ArQmA on altex.exchange; 4 different wallets managed to steal the entire ARQ exchange deposits before the ARQ wallet was put into maintenance.

Impact

Theft of all coins deposited in an exchange wallet.