Liquidity Management

Summary

The PerpetualVault contract's setKeeper() function does not emit an event when a new keeper is assigned. This lack of transparency makes it difficult to track critical role changes, hindering security monitoring and reducing on-chain auditability of administrative actions.

Vulnerability Details

The setKeeper() function in PerpetualVault.sol only checks for the zero address but does not emit an event:

The keeper role in this contract likely has significant privileges related to execution of transactions, making changes to this role particularly important to track.

Impact

• Limited auditability of role changes, making it difficult to track keeper assignments and changes over time

• Potentially undetected unauthorized role assignments or malicious role changes

• Security teams and protocol users have reduced visibility into important administrative actions

• Historical analysis of role changes becomes more difficult and less reliable

• Severity: 🟡 Medium

Tools Used

Manual code review

Recommendations

Add event emission when updating the keeper:

This improvement:

1. Declares a specific event for keeper changes

2. Indexes both the old and new keeper addresses for efficient filtering

3. Includes both values to maintain a complete history of changes

4. Follows established patterns for role change events

Proof of Concept for Lack of Event Emission

Overview:

This proof of concept demonstrates how the lack of event emission for keeper role changes impairs the ability to track and audit critical role changes in the protocol.

Actors:

• Admin: The contract owner who can assign keeper roles.

• Auditor/Monitor: External entities trying to track role changes.

• Protocol: The PerpetualVault contract.

Working Test Case:

Explanation:

1. Setup: We deploy both the original contract and a fixed version that emits events for keeper changes.

2. Auditing Scenario:

   • When a keeper is changed in the original contract, no events are emitted, making it impossible to track these changes on-chain.

   • With the fixed contract, each keeper change emits an event that can be indexed and monitored.

3. Impact for Auditors/Monitors:

   • Without events, auditors must rely on contract state snapshots to detect role changes, which is much less reliable.

   • Security monitoring tools typically rely on events to detect administrative actions, so the absence of events makes automated security monitoring difficult.

   • The history of role changes cannot be accurately reconstructed from the blockchain data.

4. Benefits of the Fix:

   • Clear tracking of all keeper role changes, including when they occurred and who was involved.

   • Improved ability to detect unauthorized role assignments.

   • Better support for security monitoring and compliance.