CVE-2021-41264

OpenZeppelin Contracts is a library for smart contract development. In affected versions upgradeable contracts using UUPSUpgradeable may be vulnerable to an attack affecting uninitialized implementation contracts. A fix is included in version 4.3.2 of @openzeppelin/contracts and @openzeppelin/contracts-upgradeable. For users unable to upgrade; initialize implementation contracts using UUPSUpgradeable by invoking the initializer function (usually called initialize). An example is provided in the forum.

Weakness

The product does not initialize or incorrectly initializes a resource, which might leave the resource in an unexpected state when it is accessed or used.

Affected Software

Potential Mitigations

• Use a language that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid.
• For example, in Java, if the programmer does not explicitly initialize a variable, then the code could produce a compile-time error (if the variable is local) or automatically initialize the variable to the default value for the variable’s type. In Perl, if explicit initialization is not performed, then a default value of undef is assigned, which is interpreted as 0, false, or an equivalent value depending on the context in which the variable is accessed.

Related Attack Patterns

• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/26.html
• https://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/29.html

References

• https://forum.openzeppelin.com/t/security-advisory-initialize-uups-implementation-contracts/15301
• https://github.com/OpenZeppelin/openzeppelin-contracts/commit/024cc50df478d2e8f78539819749e94d6df60592
• https://github.com/OpenZeppelin/openzeppelin-contracts/security/advisories/GHSA-5vp3-v4hc-gx76