← Back to Audits

Permapod Core Contracts Zigchain - Permapod

Prepared by:

Halborn Logo

HALBORN

Last Updated 11/05/2025

Date of Engagement: October 21st, 2025 - October 29th, 2025

Summary

100% of all REPORTED Findings have been addressed

All findings

5

Critical

0

High

0

Medium

2

Low

1

Informational

2

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

Permapod engaged Halborn to conduct a security assessment of the Zigchain Oracle contract suite, beginning on October 21st, 2025 and ending on October 29th, 2025. This security assessment was scoped to the smart contracts located in the Zigchain Oracle repository, specifically focusing on the integration and implementation of the Stork Oracle within the CosmWasm-based Zigchain network. Commit hashes and further details can be found in the Sources section of this report.


Zigchain Oracle is a CosmWasm smart-contract module responsible for providing on-chain price feeds for assets within the Zigchain ecosystem. It integrates multiple price sources — including Fixed, Stork, and Pyth — to deliver verified and up-to-date pricing data to other on-chain modules. The scope of this assessment centered primarily on the Stork oracle integration, which enables low-latency, verifiable price queries with configurable validation parameters such as staleness, confidence, and deviation thresholds.

2. Assessment Summary

The team at Halborn assigned a full-time security engineer to verify the security of the smart contracts. The security engineer is a blockchain and smart-contract security expert with advanced penetration testing, smart-contract hacking, and deep knowledge of multiple blockchain protocols.

The purpose of this assessment is to:

    • Ensure that smart contract functions operate as intended

    • Identify potential security issues with the smart contracts


In summary, Halborn identified some improvements to reduce the likelihood and impact of risks, which have been completely addressed by the Permapod team. The main ones were the following:

    • Replace silent zero-price fallbacks with explicit error handling that returns domain-specific errors to avoid propagating price = 0 into business logic.

    • Correct timestamp validation to explicitly reject future timestamps rather than treating them as fresh, preventing bypass of staleness checks.

    • Eliminate unsafe use of signed-integer absolute operations that can panic.

    • Expand unit, integration, and fuzz testing to cover edge cases (overflow, negative values, stale/future timestamps, decimal conversion failures).

    • Emit on-chain CosmWasm events for price queries and validation outcomes to improve observability and post-execution diagnostics.


3. Test Approach and Methodology

Halborn performed a combination of manual and automated security testing to balance efficiency, timeliness, practicality, and accuracy in regard to the scope of this assessment. While manual testing is recommended to uncover flaws in logic, process, and implementation; automated testing techniques help enhance coverage of the code and can quickly identify items that do not follow the security best practices. The following phases and associated tools were used during the assessment:

    • Research into architecture, purpose, and use of the platform.

    • Manual code read and walk through.

    • Manual assessment of use and safety for the critical Rust variables and functions in scope to identify any arithmetic related vulnerability classes.

    • Architecture related logical controls.

    • Cross contract call controls.

    • Scanning of Rust files for vulnerabilities (cargo audit)

    • Review and verification of integration tests.


4. RISK METHODOLOGY

Every vulnerability and issue observed by Halborn is ranked based on two sets of Metrics and a Severity Coefficient. This system is inspired by the industry standard Common Vulnerability Scoring System.
The two Metric sets are: Exploitability and Impact. Exploitability captures the ease and technical means by which vulnerabilities can be exploited and Impact describes the consequences of a successful exploit.
The Severity Coefficients is designed to further refine the accuracy of the ranking with two factors: Reversibility and Scope. These capture the impact of the vulnerability on the environment as well as the number of users and smart contracts affected.
The final score is a value between 0-10 rounded up to 1 decimal place and 10 corresponding to the highest security risk. This provides an objective and accurate rating of the severity of security vulnerabilities in smart contracts.
The system is designed to assist in identifying and prioritizing vulnerabilities based on their level of risk to address the most critical issues in a timely manner.

4.1 EXPLOITABILITY

Attack Origin (AO):
Captures whether the attack requires compromising a specific account.
Attack Cost (AC):
Captures the cost of exploiting the vulnerability incurred by the attacker relative to sending a single transaction on the relevant blockchain. Includes but is not limited to financial and computational cost.
Attack Complexity (AX):
Describes the conditions beyond the attacker’s control that must exist in order to exploit the vulnerability. Includes but is not limited to macro situation, available third-party liquidity and regulatory challenges.
Metrics:
EXPLOITABILITY METRIC (mem_e)METRIC VALUENUMERICAL VALUE
Attack Origin (AO)Arbitrary (AO:A)
Specific (AO:S)		1
0.2
Attack Cost (AC)Low (AC:L)
Medium (AC:M)
High (AC:H)		1
0.67
0.33
Attack Complexity (AX)Low (AX:L)
Medium (AX:M)
High (AX:H)		1
0.67
0.33
Exploitability EE is calculated using the following formula:

E=∏meE = \prod m_e

4.2 IMPACT

Confidentiality (C):
Measures the impact to the confidentiality of the information resources managed by the contract due to a successfully exploited vulnerability. Confidentiality refers to limiting access to authorized users only.
Integrity (I):
Measures the impact to integrity of a successfully exploited vulnerability. Integrity refers to the trustworthiness and veracity of data stored and/or processed on-chain. Integrity impact directly affecting Deposit or Yield records is excluded.
Availability (A):
Measures the impact to the availability of the impacted component resulting from a successfully exploited vulnerability. This metric refers to smart contract features and functionality, not state. Availability impact directly affecting Deposit or Yield is excluded.
Deposit (D):
Measures the impact to the deposits made to the contract by either users or owners.
Yield (Y):
Measures the impact to the yield generated by the contract for either users or owners.
Metrics:
IMPACT METRIC (mIm_I)METRIC VALUENUMERICAL VALUE
Confidentiality (C)None (C:N)
Low (C:L)
Medium (C:M)
High (C:H)
Critical (C:C)		0
0.25
0.5
0.75
1
Integrity (I)None (I:N)
Low (I:L)
Medium (I:M)
High (I:H)
Critical (I:C)		0
0.25
0.5
0.75
1
Availability (A)None (A:N)
Low (A:L)
Medium (A:M)
High (A:H)
Critical (A:C)		0
0.25
0.5
0.75
1
Deposit (D)None (D:N)
Low (D:L)
Medium (D:M)
High (D:H)
Critical (D:C)		0
0.25
0.5
0.75
1
Yield (Y)None (Y:N)
Low (Y:L)
Medium (Y:M)
High (Y:H)
Critical (Y:C)		0
0.25
0.5
0.75
1
Impact II is calculated using the following formula:

I=max(mI)+∑mI−max(mI)4I = max(m_I) + \frac{\sum{m_I} - max(m_I)}{4}

4.3 SEVERITY COEFFICIENT

Reversibility (R):
Describes the share of the exploited vulnerability effects that can be reversed. For upgradeable contracts, assume the contract private key is available.
Scope (S):
Captures whether a vulnerability in one vulnerable contract impacts resources in other contracts.
Metrics:
SEVERITY COEFFICIENT (CC)COEFFICIENT VALUENUMERICAL VALUE
Reversibility (rr)None (R:N)
Partial (R:P)
Full (R:F)		1
0.5
0.25
Scope (ss)Changed (S:C)
Unchanged (S:U)		1.25
1
Severity Coefficient CC is obtained by the following product:

C=rsC = rs

The Vulnerability Severity Score SS is obtained by:

S=min(10,EIC∗10)S = min(10, EIC * 10)

The score is rounded up to 1 decimal places.
SeverityScore Value Range
Critical9 - 10
High7 - 8.9
Medium4.5 - 6.9
Low2 - 4.4
Informational0 - 1.9

5. SCOPE

REPOSITORY
(a) Repository: permapod-core-contracts-zigchain
(b) Assessed Commit ID: b2acbcd
(c) Items in scope:
  • contracts/oracle/zigchain/src/price_source.rs
  • contracts/oracle/zigchain/src/stork.rs
  • contracts/oracle/zigchain/src/error.rs
↓ Expand ↓
Out-of-Scope: Third party dependencies and economic attacks.
Remediation Commit ID:
Out-of-Scope: New features/implementations after the remediation commit IDs.

6. Assessment Summary & Findings Overview

Critical

0

High

0

Medium

2

Low

1

Informational

2

Security analysisRisk levelRemediation Date
Silent zero-price fallback via unwrap_or_default() in Stork price pathsMediumSolved - 10/29/2025
Future timestamp handling: Faulty logic allows future-dated prices to bypass staleness validationMediumSolved - 10/30/2025
Panic from unsafe i128.abs() conversionLowSolved - 10/30/2025
Insufficient test coverage and lack of fuzzingInformationalSolved - 10/30/2025
Missing event emission for price query resultsInformationalNot Applicable

7. Findings & Tech Details

7.1 Silent zero-price fallback via unwrap_or_default() in Stork price paths

//

Medium

Description
BVSS
Recommendation
Remediation Comment
Remediation Hash
https://github.com/permapod/permapod-core-contracts-zigchain/commit/2b85aaed8162084b3f67dddda9b56ab675533156

7.2 Future timestamp handling: Faulty logic allows future-dated prices to bypass staleness validation

//

Medium

Description
BVSS
Recommendation
Remediation Comment
Remediation Hash
https://github.com/permapod/permapod-core-contracts-zigchain/commit/49059c4d1706a04917f9031743d209370e4c3431

7.3 Panic from unsafe i128.abs() conversion

//

Low

Description
BVSS
Recommendation
Remediation Comment
Remediation Hash
https://github.com/permapod/permapod-core-contracts-zigchain/commit/49059c4d1706a04917f9031743d209370e4c3431

7.4 Insufficient test coverage and lack of fuzzing

//

Informational

Description
BVSS
Recommendation
Remediation Comment
Remediation Hash
https://github.com/permapod/permapod-core-contracts-zigchain/commit/49059c4d1706a04917f9031743d209370e4c3431

7.5 Missing event emission for price query results

//

Informational

Description
BVSS
Recommendation
Remediation Comment

Halborn strongly recommends conducting a follow-up assessment of the project either within six months or immediately following any material changes to the codebase, whichever comes first. This approach is crucial for maintaining the project’s integrity and addressing potential vulnerabilities introduced by code modifications.

// Download the full report

Permapod Core Contracts Zigchain

* Use Google Chrome for best results

** Check "Background Graphics" in the print settings if needed