Thunder Loan

AI First Flight #7
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Submission Details
Severity: high
Valid

Upgrade changes storage layout and corrupts `s_flashLoanFee`

Title: Upgrade changes storage layout and corrupts s_flashLoanFee

Severity: Medium

Scope Affected:

  • src/protocol/ThunderLoan.sol

  • src/upgradedProtocol/ThunderLoanUpgraded.sol

Root + Impact

Description

The normal behavior is that an upgradeable contract must preserve storage layout across implementations. Existing storage slots should continue to represent the same variables after upgrade.

The issue is that ThunderLoanUpgraded removes s_feePrecision from storage and replaces it with a constant. In the original implementation, s_feePrecision is stored before s_flashLoanFee. In the upgraded implementation, s_flashLoanFee moves into the old s_feePrecision slot. After upgrading, getFee() reads 1e18 instead of the intended 3e15.

Original storage:

mapping(IERC20 => AssetToken) public s_tokenToAssetToken;
@> uint256 private s_feePrecision;
@> uint256 private s_flashLoanFee;
mapping(IERC20 token => bool currentlyFlashLoaning) private s_currentlyFlashLoaning;

Upgraded storage:

mapping(IERC20 => AssetToken) public s_tokenToAssetToken;
@> uint256 private s_flashLoanFee;
@> uint256 public constant FEE_PRECISION = 1e18;
mapping(IERC20 token => bool currentlyFlashLoaning) private s_currentlyFlashLoaning;

Storage layout from forge inspect:

ThunderLoan:
s_feePrecision slot 203
s_flashLoanFee slot 204
ThunderLoanUpgraded:
s_flashLoanFee slot 203

Risk

Likelihood:

  • This occurs whenever the planned upgrade to ThunderLoanUpgraded is executed.

  • This occurs deterministically because Solidity storage slots are assigned by declaration order.

Impact:

  • The flash loan fee becomes 1e18, or 100%, instead of 3e15, or 0.3%.

  • Flash loans become economically broken after upgrade until the owner notices and manually resets the fee.

Proof of Concept

function testUpgradeCorruptsFlashLoanFeeStorageSlot() public allowedToken {
assertEq(thunderLoan.getFee(), 3e15);
assertEq(thunderLoan.getFeePrecision(), 1e18);
ThunderLoanUpgraded upgradedImplementation = new ThunderLoanUpgraded();
thunderLoan.upgradeTo(address(upgradedImplementation));
ThunderLoanUpgraded upgraded = ThunderLoanUpgraded(address(thunderLoan));
assertEq(upgraded.getFee(), 1e18);
}

PoC Explanation

This PoC demonstrates a deterministic storage-slot collision during upgrade, not a runtime edge case.

The proxy is initialized with ThunderLoan storage layout, where:

s_feePrecision is in slot 203 and set to 1e18
s_flashLoanFee is in slot 204 and set to 3e15 (0.3%)
The implementation is upgraded to ThunderLoanUpgraded, which removes s_feePrecision as a storage variable and makes precision a constant.

In the upgraded layout, s_flashLoanFee now occupies slot 203.

After upgrade, getFee() reads slot 203 (old s_feePrecision value), so it returns 1e18 instead of 3e15.

The assertion assertEq(upgraded.getFee(), 1e18) proves the fee value is corrupted solely by the upgrade, confirming broken storage compatibility.

This proves the issue is guaranteed whenever this upgrade path is used: the fee parameter is silently remapped to the wrong slot.

Recommended Mitigation

Preserve storage layout by keeping s_feePrecision in the upgraded implementation:

mapping(IERC20 => AssetToken) public s_tokenToAssetToken;
+ uint256 private s_feePrecision;
uint256 private s_flashLoanFee;
- uint256 public constant FEE_PRECISION = 1e18;
mapping(IERC20 token => bool currentlyFlashLoaning) private s_currentlyFlashLoaning;

Alternatively, append new variables only after all existing storage variables.

Updates

Lead Judging Commences

ai-first-flight-judge Lead Judge about 5 hours ago
Submission Judgement Published
Validated
Assigned finding tags:

[H-01] Storage Collision during upgrade

## Description The thunderloanupgrade.sol storage layout is not compatible with the storage layout of thunderloan.sol which will cause storage collision and mismatch of variable to different data. ## Vulnerability Details Thunderloan.sol at slot 1,2 and 3 holds s_feePrecision, s_flashLoanFee and s_currentlyFlashLoaning, respectively, but the ThunderLoanUpgraded at slot 1 and 2 holds s_flashLoanFee, s_currentlyFlashLoaning respectively. the s_feePrecision from the thunderloan.sol was changed to a constant variable which will no longer be assessed from the state variable. This will cause the location at which the upgraded version will be pointing to for some significant state variables like s_flashLoanFee to be wrong because s_flashLoanFee is now pointing to the slot of the s_feePrecision in the thunderloan.sol and when this fee is used to compute the fee for flashloan it will return a fee amount greater than the intention of the developer. s_currentlyFlashLoaning might not really be affected as it is back to default when a flashloan is completed but still to be noted that the value at that slot can be cleared to be on a safer side. ## Impact 1. Fee is miscalculated for flashloan 1. users pay same amount of what they borrowed as fee ## POC 2 ``` function testFlashLoanAfterUpgrade() public setAllowedToken hasDeposits { //upgrade thunderloan upgradeThunderloan(); uint256 amountToBorrow = AMOUNT * 10; console.log("amount flashloaned", amountToBorrow); uint256 calculatedFee = thunderLoan.getCalculatedFee( tokenA, amountToBorrow ); AssetToken assetToken = thunderLoan.getAssetFromToken(tokenA); vm.startPrank(user); tokenA.mint(address(mockFlashLoanReceiver), amountToBorrow); thunderLoan.flashloan( address(mockFlashLoanReceiver), tokenA, amountToBorrow, "" ); vm.stopPrank(); console.log("feepaid", calculatedFee); assertEq(amountToBorrow, calculatedFee); } ``` Add the code above to thunderloantest.t.sol and run `forge test --mt testFlashLoanAfterUpgrade -vv` to test for the second poc ## Recommendations The team should should make sure the the fee is pointing to the correct location as intended by the developer: a suggestion recommendation is for the team to get the feeValue from the previous implementation, clear the values that will not be needed again and after upgrade reset the fee back to its previous value from the implementation. ##POC for recommendation ``` // function upgradeThunderloanFixed() internal { thunderLoanUpgraded = new ThunderLoanUpgraded(); //getting the current fee; uint fee = thunderLoan.getFee(); // clear the fee as thunderLoan.updateFlashLoanFee(0); // upgrade to the new implementation thunderLoan.upgradeTo(address(thunderLoanUpgraded)); //wrapped the abi thunderLoanUpgraded = ThunderLoanUpgraded(address(proxy)); // set the fee back to the correct value thunderLoanUpgraded.updateFlashLoanFee(fee); } function testSlotValuesFixedfterUpgrade() public setAllowedToken { AssetToken asset = thunderLoan.getAssetFromToken(tokenA); uint precision = thunderLoan.getFeePrecision(); uint fee = thunderLoan.getFee(); bool isflanshloaning = thunderLoan.isCurrentlyFlashLoaning(tokenA); /// 4 slots before upgrade console.log("????SLOTS VALUE BEFORE UPGRADE????"); console.log("slot 0 for s_tokenToAssetToken =>", address(asset)); console.log("slot 1 for s_feePrecision =>", precision); console.log("slot 2 for s_flashLoanFee =>", fee); console.log("slot 3 for s_currentlyFlashLoaning =>", isflanshloaning); //upgrade function upgradeThunderloanFixed(); //// after upgrade they are only 3 valid slot left because precision is now set to constant AssetToken assetUpgrade = thunderLoan.getAssetFromToken(tokenA); uint feeUpgrade = thunderLoan.getFee(); bool isflanshloaningUpgrade = thunderLoan.isCurrentlyFlashLoaning( tokenA ); console.log("????SLOTS VALUE After UPGRADE????"); console.log("slot 0 for s_tokenToAssetToken =>", address(assetUpgrade)); console.log("slot 1 for s_flashLoanFee =>", feeUpgrade); console.log( "slot 2 for s_currentlyFlashLoaning =>", isflanshloaningUpgrade ); assertEq(address(asset), address(assetUpgrade)); //asserting precision value before upgrade to be what fee takes after upgrades assertEq(fee, feeUpgrade); // #POC assertEq(isflanshloaning, isflanshloaningUpgrade); } ``` Add the code above to thunderloantest.t.sol and run with `forge test --mt testSlotValuesFixedfterUpgrade -vv`. it can also be tested with `testFlashLoanAfterUpgrade function` and see the fee properly calculated for flashloan

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