Hawk High

Summary

The contract deployment logic in DeployLevelOne.sol uses a proxy pattern (ERC1967Proxy) to deploy and initialize a LevelOne logic contract. However, the initialization process does not safeguard against potential re-initialization, especially if deployed without atomic setup. This introduces a critical vulnerability that can lead to ownership hijacking or role abuse, especially in production environments.

Vulnerability Details

Type: Unprotected Initialization / Insecure Proxy Setup

Location: DeployLevelOne.sol, deployLevelOne() function

• The proxy is created with an empty initializer data payload, and the initialize() function is called only afterward.

• the initialize() in LevelOne is not protected with OpenZeppelin's initializer modifier (from Initializable), any address can front-run this call and take over the contract.

Impact

• Ownership Takeover: An attacker could call initialize() on the proxy before the deployer, assigning themselves as principal.

• Logic Abuse: Misconfiguration or state manipulation, such as setting an arbitrary USDC token address or fee value.

• DoS Potential: Re-initialization with invalid parameters could render the contract unusable.

• Irreversible: If initialization occurs maliciously once, it cannot be undone without contract migration or proxy upgrade.

Proof of Concept

initialize() is not protected:

• attackerAddress becomes the principal

• fakeUSDCAddress may be a malicious token

• schoolFees is arbitrarily low or zero

This can happen on-chain in a race condition if the deployer delays calling initialize().

Tools Used

Manual code review

Recommendations

• Use OpenZeppelin's Initializable contract

• Perform atomic proxy deployment with initialization