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Arcadia Finance Reentrancy Exploit

  • Project: Arcadia Finance
  • Exploit_type: Incomplete Reentrancy Protection in Liquidation Logic
  • Loss: ~$455,000
  • Entry_point: liquidateVault() via vaultManagementAction() in the Vault contract
  • Exploit_vector: The attacker used a malicious contract to re-enter the liquidation logic mid-execution, bypassing health checks and protocol integrity, effectively draining vault collateral repeatedly.
  • Severity: Critical
  • Attack_steps:
    • Took a flash loan (2.4 WETH + ~20K USDC) from Aave on Ethereum and Optimism
    • Deposited borrowed funds into a leveraged vault using doActionWithLeverage()
    • Within vault logic, supplied a malicious actionHandler contract to vaultManagementAction()
    • Malicious handler re-entered liquidateVault() before collateral health check completed
    • This bypass allowed funds withdrawal while vault state was still "healthy," nullifying checks
    • Repeated the sequence across Ethereum and Optimism vaults—draining ~$455K total
  • Impact: Protocol funds drained across chains; TVL dropped ~77%, user positions frozen. decrypt.co
  • Exploitability: High – reentrancy flaw is well-known and exploitable in low-complexity scenarios
  • Root_cause: Lack of reentrancy guard and improper state validation ordering in liquidation logic, allowing mid-transaction health checks to be bypassed
  • Resource:Link