Thunder Loan

AI First Flight #7
Beginner FriendlyFoundryDeFiOracle
EXP
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Submission Details
Severity: high
Valid

Storage slot reordering between ThunderLoan and ThunderLoanUpgraded corrupts s_flashLoanFee to 100% on upgrade

Root + Impact

Description

  • ThunderLoan declares s_feePrecision then s_flashLoanFee in that order, occupying two consecutive storage slots. Flash loan fees are calculated using both values.

  • ThunderLoanUpgraded removes s_feePrecision (replacing it with a constant) and declares s_flashLoanFee first. This shifts s_flashLoanFee into the slot previously occupied by s_feePrecision (value: 1e18). After upgrade, every flash loan fee calculation reads 1e18 as the fee rate — a 100% fee — making the protocol completely unusable. The initializer modifier prevents ThunderLoanUpgraded.initialize() from being called again after the proxy's first initialization, so the 1e18 value is permanent.

// ThunderLoan storage layout:
uint256 private s_feePrecision; // slot N = 1e18 (set in initialize)
uint256 private s_flashLoanFee; // slot N+1 = 3e15 (set in initialize)
// ThunderLoanUpgraded storage layout:
uint256 private s_flashLoanFee; // slot N — reads old s_feePrecision value (1e18)!
uint256 public constant FEE_PRECISION = 1e18; // constant — no slot consumed
function getCalculatedFee(IERC20 token, uint256 amount) public view returns (uint256 fee) {
uint256 valueOfBorrowedToken = (amount * getPriceInWeth(address(token))) / FEE_PRECISION;
fee = (valueOfBorrowedToken * s_flashLoanFee) / FEE_PRECISION;
// s_flashLoanFee reads 1e18 from misaligned slot => fee = 100% of borrowed value
}

Risk

Likelihood:

  • The upgrade is the intended protocol evolution path — any deployment of ThunderLoanUpgraded via the existing proxy triggers this corruption immediately and automatically.

  • There is no safe upgrade path using the current contracts; the storage mismatch is structural.

Impact:

  • All flash loans post-upgrade charge 100% of the borrowed token's WETH value as a fee, making every flash loan economically infeasible.

  • Protocol functionality and revenue are both destroyed simultaneously and irreversibly upon upgrade.

Proof of Concept

Place this test in test/ and run forge test --match-test test_upgradeCorruptsFlashLoanFee. The test demonstrates that upgrading to ThunderLoanUpgraded corrupts s_flashLoanFee because the new contract removes s_feePrecision from slot N, shifting s_flashLoanFee into the wrong storage slot.

function test_upgradeCorruptsFlashLoanFee() public {
// Deploy and initialize ThunderLoan via proxy
ThunderLoan impl = new ThunderLoan();
ERC1967Proxy proxy = new ERC1967Proxy(address(impl), "");
ThunderLoan thunderLoan = ThunderLoan(address(proxy));
MockPoolFactory mockPoolFactory = new MockPoolFactory();
thunderLoan.initialize(address(mockPoolFactory));
// Verify correct fee pre-upgrade
assertEq(thunderLoan.getFee(), 3e15);
// Upgrade to ThunderLoanUpgraded
ThunderLoanUpgraded upgradedImpl = new ThunderLoanUpgraded();
thunderLoan.upgradeTo(address(upgradedImpl));
ThunderLoanUpgraded upgraded = ThunderLoanUpgraded(address(proxy));
// Fee is now 1e18 (100%) due to storage slot collision
assertEq(upgraded.getFee(), 1e18);
}

Recommended Mitigation

Preserve the original storage layout in ThunderLoanUpgraded by keeping a placeholder variable at slot N (where s_feePrecision previously lived) so s_flashLoanFee remains at the same slot after the upgrade.

// ThunderLoanUpgraded — correct storage layout:
+ uint256 private s_feePrecision; // slot N — keep in same position even if unused
uint256 private s_flashLoanFee; // slot N+1 — same position as original
uint256 public constant FEE_PRECISION = 1e18; // constant — fine to add
Updates

Lead Judging Commences

ai-first-flight-judge Lead Judge about 7 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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