Puppy Raffle

AI First Flight #1
Beginner FriendlyFoundrySolidityNFT
EXP
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Submission Details
Severity: medium
Valid

Gas DoS in enterRaffle

Root + Impact

Unbounded Nested Loop in enterRaffle() Leads to Denial of Service

Description

  • The enterRaffle() function performs a duplicate check using nested loops:

    for (uint256 i = 0; i < players.length - 1; i++) {
    for (uint256 j = i + 1; j < players.length; j++) {
    require(players[i] != players[j], "PuppyRaffle: Duplicate player");
    }
    }

    This results in O(n²) time complexity, meaning gas cost grows quadratically as the number of players increases.

Risk

Likelihood:

  • The loop runs on every call to enterRaffle()

Cost increases with total players, not just new entries

  • Attackers can intentionally inflate array size

Impact:

  • As the players array grows:

    • Gas cost becomes prohibitively expensive

    • Transactions start reverting due to block gas limits

    • New users cannot enter the raffle

    This results in a Denial of Service (DoS) where:

    • The raffle becomes unusable

    • No new participants can join

    • Protocol functionality is effectively frozen

Proof of Concept

An attacker intentionally bloats the players array to make future entries fail.

Attacker repeatedly calls enterRaffle() with many addresses:

  • Could use multiple EOAs or contract-generated addresses

  • This increases players.length significantly

  • Due to O(n²) complexity:

    • Gas cost becomes extremely high

  • Eventually:

    • Any new enterRaffle() call exceeds block gas limit

    • All future entries revert


      ```Solidity function testDoSRevert() public { address;
      // Fill with many players
      for (uint256 i = 0; i < 1500; i++) {
          playersBatch[0] = address(uint160(i + 1));
          raffle.enterRaffle{value: entranceFee}(playersBatch);
      }
      
      // Next call should fail due to gas
      playersBatch[0] = address(999999);
      
      vm.expectRevert();
      raffle.enterRaffle{value: entranceFee}(playersBatch);
      

      }

      <br />
      <br />

Recommended Mitigation

Replace nested loops with constant-time lookup:

+ mapping(address => bool) public isPlayer;

Improved Implementation:

for (uint256 i = 0; i < newPlayers.length; i++) {
require(!isPlayer[newPlayers[i]], "Duplicate player");
+ isPlayer[newPlayers[i]] = true;
players.push(newPlayers[i]);
}
Updates

Lead Judging Commences

ai-first-flight-judge Lead Judge about 3 hours ago
Submission Judgement Published
Validated
Assigned finding tags:

[M-01] `PuppyRaffle: enterRaffle` Use of gas extensive duplicate check leads to Denial of Service, making subsequent participants to spend much more gas than prev ones to enter

## Description `enterRaffle` function uses gas inefficient duplicate check that causes leads to Denial of Service, making subsequent participants to spend much more gas than previous users to enter. ## Vulnerability Details In the `enterRaffle` function, to check duplicates, it loops through the `players` array. As the `player` array grows, it will make more checks, which leads the later user to pay more gas than the earlier one. More users in the Raffle, more checks a user have to make leads to pay more gas. ## Impact As the arrays grows significantly over time, it will make the function unusable due to block gas limit. This is not a fair approach and lead to bad user experience. ## POC In existing test suit, add this test to see the difference b/w gas for users. once added run `forge test --match-test testEnterRaffleIsGasInefficient -vvvvv` in terminal. you will be able to see logs in terminal. ```solidity function testEnterRaffleIsGasInefficient() public { vm.startPrank(owner); vm.txGasPrice(1); /// First we enter 100 participants uint256 firstBatch = 100; address[] memory firstBatchPlayers = new address[](firstBatch); for(uint256 i = 0; i < firstBatchPlayers; i++) { firstBatch[i] = address(i); } uint256 gasStart = gasleft(); puppyRaffle.enterRaffle{value: entranceFee * firstBatch}(firstBatchPlayers); uint256 gasEnd = gasleft(); uint256 gasUsedForFirstBatch = (gasStart - gasEnd) * txPrice; console.log("Gas cost of the first 100 partipants is:", gasUsedForFirstBatch); /// Now we enter 100 more participants uint256 secondBatch = 200; address[] memory secondBatchPlayers = new address[](secondBatch); for(uint256 i = 100; i < secondBatchPlayers; i++) { secondBatch[i] = address(i); } gasStart = gasleft(); puppyRaffle.enterRaffle{value: entranceFee * secondBatch}(secondBatchPlayers); gasEnd = gasleft(); uint256 gasUsedForSecondBatch = (gasStart - gasEnd) * txPrice; console.log("Gas cost of the next 100 participant is:", gasUsedForSecondBatch); vm.stopPrank(owner); } ``` ## Recommendations Here are some of recommendations, any one of that can be used to mitigate this risk. 1. User a mapping to check duplicates. For this approach you to declare a variable `uint256 raffleID`, that way each raffle will have unique id. Add a mapping from player address to raffle id to keep of users for particular round. ```diff + uint256 public raffleID; + mapping (address => uint256) public usersToRaffleId; . . function enterRaffle(address[] memory newPlayers) public payable { require(msg.value == entranceFee * newPlayers.length, "PuppyRaffle: Must send enough to enter raffle"); for (uint256 i = 0; i < newPlayers.length; i++) { players.push(newPlayers[i]); + usersToRaffleId[newPlayers[i]] = true; } // Check for duplicates + for (uint256 i = 0; i < newPlayers.length; i++){ + require(usersToRaffleId[i] != raffleID, "PuppyRaffle: Already a participant"); - for (uint256 i = 0; i < players.length - 1; i++) { - for (uint256 j = i + 1; j < players.length; j++) { - require(players[i] != players[j], "PuppyRaffle: Duplicate player"); - } } emit RaffleEnter(newPlayers); } . . . function selectWinner() external { //Existing code + raffleID = raffleID + 1; } ``` 2. Allow duplicates participants, As technically you can't stop people participants more than once. As players can use new address to enter. ```solidity function enterRaffle(address[] memory newPlayers) public payable { require(msg.value == entranceFee * newPlayers.length, "PuppyRaffle: Must send enough to enter raffle"); for (uint256 i = 0; i < newPlayers.length; i++) { players.push(newPlayers[i]); } emit RaffleEnter(newPlayers); } ```

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