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Panic Error

Description​

  • Detector ID: panic-error
  • Vulnerability Category: Validations and error handling
  • Severity: Enhancement
  • Detectors: panic-error
  • Test Cases: panic-error-1

This detector checks for the use of the panic! macro in the code. The panic! macro is used to stop execution when a condition is not met. This is useful for testing and prototyping, but should be avoided in production code.

Using Result as return type for functions that can fail is the idiomatic way to handle errors in Rust. The Result type is an enum that can be either Ok or Err. The Err variant can contain an error message. The ? operator can be used to propagate the error message to the caller.

This way, the caller can decide how to handle the error, although the state of the contract is always reverted on the callee.

Exploit Scenario​

In the following example, the panic! command is being used to handle errors, disallowing the caller to handle the error in a different way, and completely stopping execution of the caller contract.

#[ink(message)]
pub fn add(&mut self, value: u32)   {
    match self.value.checked_add(value) {
        Some(v) => self.value = v,
        None => panic!("Overflow error"),
    };
}

The add function takes a value as an argument and adds it to the value stored in the contract's storage. The function first checks if the addition will cause an overflow. If the addition will cause an overflow, the function will panic. If the addition will not cause an overflow, the function will add the value to the contract's storage.

The usage of panic! in this example, is not recommended because it will stop the execution of the caller contract. If the method was called by the user, then he will receive ContractTrapped as the only error message.

The vulnerable code example can be found here.

Remediation​

A possible remediation goes as follows:

#[ink(message)]
pub fn add(&mut self, value: u32) -> Result<(), Error>  {
    match self.value.checked_add(value) {
        Some(v) => self.value = v,
        None => return Err(Error::OverflowError),
    };
    Ok(())
}

And adding the following Error enum:

#[derive(Debug, PartialEq, Eq, scale::Encode, scale::Decode)]
#[cfg_attr(feature = "std", derive(scale_info::TypeInfo))]
pub enum Error {
    /// An overflow was produced while adding
    OverflowError,
}

By first defining the Error enum and then returning a Result<(), Error>, more information is added to the caller and, e.g. the caller contract could decide to revert the transaction or to continue execution.

The remediated code example can be found here.

References​