Web3 Incident Response — First 24 Hours

Incident Response — Web3 incident response is the immediate handling of a live security incident — containing the exploit, preventing further loss, preserving evidence, tracing funds, coordinating with exchanges and communicating with users — carried out in the hours when decisions have the largest effect on the outcome.

What a incident response covers

The first hour of an incident sets the ceiling on the outcome. The decisions are hard and simultaneous: pause or not, what to say publicly, whether the pause itself creates a worse problem, which exchanges to contact, and whether the attacker still has an open path. Teams making these calls for the first time, at 3am, under public scrutiny, make expensive mistakes.

We take incident calls the same day. We work with your engineers to establish what is still exploitable and close it, preserve the evidence before it is overwritten, start fund tracing immediately, prepare exchange outreach, and help you write the public communication that does not create a second incident.

Vulnerability classes we look for

Containment decisions

What to pause, what pausing breaks, whether an upgrade is safer than a pause, and whether the attacker retains a path after each option.

Ongoing exposure assessment

Whether the same bug class exists elsewhere in the system, and what remains drainable right now.

Evidence preservation

Capturing state, logs and mempool data before they are lost, in a form that survives later scrutiny.

Fund tracing and freeze outreach

Following funds in real time and getting a credible request in front of exchange compliance teams while it can still matter.

Key and access compromise

Establishing whether keys or infrastructure were compromised, and rotating without breaking recovery.

Whitehat and negotiation paths

When and how to open a channel to the attacker, and what a bounty offer commits you to.

Disclosure and communication

What to say, when, and how to avoid a statement you have to retract in twelve hours.

Post-incident hardening

Root cause, the fix, the monitoring that would have caught it, and the report your users are owed.

In scope

Not in scope unless agreed

How the engagement runs

  1. Scoping and threat modelling

    We fix a commit hash, agree the in-scope contracts and read your architecture docs, then build a threat model: who the actors are, what the trust boundaries are, and which invariants must never break. Nothing is reviewed against assumptions we have not written down.

  2. Manual review

    Line-by-line review by at least two auditors working independently, focused on authorisation, accounting, upgrade paths, external integrations and the gap between what the code does and what the documentation claims it does. Most critical findings come from this phase, not from tooling.

  3. Static and dynamic analysis

    Static analysers appropriate to the language, plus property-based fuzzing and invariant testing to push the system into states no unit test covers. Tooling is used to widen coverage, never to replace the manual pass.

  4. Exploit-path simulation

    Candidate findings are proven on a forked network with a working proof of concept. We report what an attacker can actually do and what it costs them, not a theoretical severity label.

  5. Reporting

    Every finding gets a severity rating, reproduction steps, the affected code, the impact in concrete terms and a specific remediation. You get a draft for discussion before anything is finalised.

  6. Fix review and re-test

    We re-test every remediation against the original proof of concept and check that the fix has not opened a new path. The final report is yours to publish.

What you receive

How we rate severity

SeverityWhat it means
CriticalDirect loss of funds or permanent freezing of assets, exploitable by any actor.
HighLoss of funds or protocol insolvency under realistic conditions, or requiring a privileged actor to misbehave.
MediumBroken protocol behaviour, denial of service, or value leakage that does not directly drain the contract.
LowEdge-case incorrectness with limited impact, or an issue requiring implausible preconditions.
InformationalCode quality, gas efficiency, documentation mismatch and defence-in-depth suggestions.

Pricing

Single token contract: starts from $999, report in 24–48 hours. dApp, GameFi or RWA project: starts from $2,999. DeFi protocol, L2 / rollup, Bridge, ZK circuit, AI agent / MCP: scoped per project after we have seen the code.

Incident Response: frequently asked questions

We are being exploited right now. What do we do?

Contact us immediately at info@safeedges.in or on Telegram — same-day engagement. In parallel: do not delete anything, capture state and logs now, and do not make a public statement until you know whether the path is closed.

Should we pause the protocol?

It depends on what pausing breaks. Pausing can lock user funds, block liquidations and create a second incident. We help you evaluate the specific consequence in your system rather than applying a rule of thumb.

Do you work with our existing team?

Yes. You know your system; we know the incident pattern. We work alongside your engineers rather than taking over, because handover in the middle of an incident costs time you do not have.

What happens after the incident is contained?

Root cause analysis, a hardening plan, help with the public post-mortem, and a review of whether the same bug class exists elsewhere in your code. The post-mortem is also a trust asset if it is written honestly.

What do you need from us to start an audit?

A repository or contract address, a commit hash to freeze the scope, whatever architecture or spec documentation exists, and a point of contact who can answer design questions. If documentation is thin we will write our understanding of the system back to you and ask you to confirm it — that step alone catches design-level bugs.

How long does an audit take?

A single token contract is 24–48 hours. A typical dApp or mid-sized protocol runs one to two weeks. Large DeFi systems, L2s, bridges and ZK circuits are scoped per project after we have seen the code. We will give you a fixed timeline with the quote, not an estimate that moves.

Is a re-test included after we fix the issues?

Yes. Fix review is part of the engagement, not an upsell. We re-run the original proof of concept against your patched code and confirm the fix has not introduced a new path.

Related security services

Get a fixed quote in 24 hours

Send the repository and a commit hash through the contact form, message @bugtester25 on Telegram, or book a 30-minute scoping call. 200+ protocols audited · $4B+ secured · 0 hacks post-audit. Prefer email? info@safeedges.in.