Back to Blog

How to Verify a Signature in a Wrong Way — The AssociationNFT Case

Code Auditing
April 21, 2022
Image: Raymond Clarke/Flickr
Image: Raymond Clarke/Flickr

The Association NFT is a NBA launched NFT. However, we find the NFT sale contract has a serious vulnerability which allows an attacker to mint a large number NFTs, without paying any Tokens.

The root cause of the vulnerability is the incorrect use of signature verification. Basically, the contract fails to ensure that the signature can only be used by the user (and only the user) once. In this case, the attacker can reuse a privileged user’s signature and mint tokens to him/herself.

We can see that in the verify function, there is no sender's address in the signature. Besides, there is no mechanism to include a nonce to ensure that the signature can only be used once. These security requirements are the basic knowledge in the software security class.

We are surprised that how such a vulnerability can exist in a popular NFT project. The whole community needs to pay more attention to the security of the contract.

About BlockSec

BlockSec is a pioneering blockchain security company established in 2021 by a group of globally distinguished security experts. The company is committed to enhancing security and usability for the emerging Web3 world in order to facilitate its mass adoption. To this end, BlockSec provides smart contract and EVM chain security auditing services, the Phalcon platform for security development and blocking threats proactively, the MetaSleuth platform for fund tracking and investigation, and MetaSuites extension for web3 builders surfing efficiently in the crypto world.

To date, the company has served over 300 esteemed clients such as MetaMask, Uniswap Foundation, Compound, Forta, and PancakeSwap, and received tens of millions of US dollars in two rounds of financing from preeminent investors, including Matrix Partners, Vitalbridge Capital, and Fenbushi Capital.

Official website: https://blocksec.com/

Official Twitter account: https://twitter.com/BlockSecTeam

Sign up for the latest updates
Tracing $1.6B in TRON USDT: Inside the VerilyHK Ponzi Infrastructure
Case Studies

Tracing $1.6B in TRON USDT: Inside the VerilyHK Ponzi Infrastructure

An on-chain investigation into VerilyHK, a fraudulent platform that moved $1.6B in TRON USDT through a multi-layered fund-routing infrastructure of rotating wallets, paired payout channels, and exchange exit funnels, with traced connections to the FinCEN-sanctioned Huione Group.

Weekly Web3 Security Incident Roundup | Mar 30 – Apr 5, 2026
Security Insights

Weekly Web3 Security Incident Roundup | Mar 30 – Apr 5, 2026

This BlockSec weekly security report covers nine DeFi attack incidents detected between March 30 and April 5, 2026, across Solana, BNB Chain, Arbitrum, and Polygon, with total estimated losses of approximately $287M. The week was dominated by the $285.3M Drift Protocol exploit on Solana, where attackers combined multisig signer social engineering with Solana's durable nonce mechanism to bypass a zero-timelock 2-of-5 Security Council, alongside notable incidents including a $950K flash loan TWAP manipulation against the LML staking protocol, a $359K Silo Finance vault inflation via an external `wstUSR` market donation exploiting a depegged-asset oracle and `totalAssets()` accounting flaw, and an EIP-7702 delegated-code access control failure. The report provides detailed vulnerability analysis and attack transaction breakdowns for each incident, covering flawed business logic, access control, price manipulation, phishing, and misconfiguration attack types.

Drift Protocol Incident: Multisig Governance Compromise via Durable Nonce Exploitation
Security Insights

Drift Protocol Incident: Multisig Governance Compromise via Durable Nonce Exploitation

On April 1, 2026 (UTC), Drift Protocol on Solana suffered a $285.3M loss after an attacker exploited Solana's durable nonce mechanism to delay the execution of phished multisig approvals, ultimately transferring administrative control of the protocol's 2-of-5 Squads governance with zero timelock. With full admin privileges, the attacker created a malicious collateral market (CVT), inflated its oracle price, relaxed withdrawal protections, and drained USDC, JLP, SOL, cbBTC, and other assets through 31 rapid withdrawals in approximately 12 minutes. This incident highlights how durable nonce-based delayed execution can decouple signer intent from on-chain execution, bypassing the temporal assumptions that multisig security implicitly relies on.

Best Security Auditor for Web3

Validate design, code, and business logic before launch. Aligned with the highest industry security standards.

BlockSec Audit