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Security

Security Audit

A formal, structured review of a Solana program's source code, architecture, and deployment configuration by experienced security researchers, aimed at identifying vulnerabilities — including but not limited to the OWASP-equivalent Solana Top 10 (missing signer checks, owner checks, arithmetic errors, etc.) — before mainnet deployment. Reputable Solana-focused audit firms include OtterSec, Ackee Blockchain, sec3 (formerly Soteria), Neodyme, Trail of Bits, and Halborn; most audits produce a severity-rated finding report (critical, high, medium, low, informational) that programs are expected to remediate and publish. A single audit is considered minimum due diligence for programs holding significant user funds; continuous auditing and bug bounties on platforms like Immunefi are considered best practice.

IDaudit
Plain meaning

Plain meaning

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A formal, structured review of a Solana program's source code, architecture, and deployment configuration by experienced security researchers, aimed at identifying vulnerabilities — including but not limited to the OWASP-equivalent Solana Top 10 (missing signer checks, owner checks, arithmetic errors, etc.) — before mainnet deployment. Reputable Solana-focused audit firms include OtterSec, Ackee Blockchain, sec3 (formerly Soteria), Neodyme, Trail of Bits, and Halborn; most audits produce a severity-rated finding report (critical, high, medium, low, informational) that programs are expected to remediate and publish. A single audit is considered minimum due diligence for programs holding significant user funds; continuous auditing and bug bounties on platforms like Immunefi are considered best practice.

Mental model

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Technical context

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Failure modes, audits, attack surfaces, and safe design patterns.

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Security Audit (audit)
Category: Security
Definition: A formal, structured review of a Solana program's source code, architecture, and deployment configuration by experienced security researchers, aimed at identifying vulnerabilities — including but not limited to the OWASP-equivalent Solana Top 10 (missing signer checks, owner checks, arithmetic errors, etc.) — before mainnet deployment. Reputable Solana-focused audit firms include OtterSec, Ackee Blockchain, sec3 (formerly Soteria), Neodyme, Trail of Bits, and Halborn; most audits produce a severity-rated finding report (critical, high, medium, low, informational) that programs are expected to remediate and publish. A single audit is considered minimum due diligence for programs holding significant user funds; continuous auditing and bug bounties on platforms like Immunefi are considered best practice.
Related: OtterSec, Sec3 (formerly Soteria), Neodyme
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Concept graph

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Branch

OtterSec

Leading Solana security audit firm that has audited major protocols including Jupiter, Marinade, Jito, and the Solana runtime. Known for deep expertise in Rust/Solana program security and responsible vulnerability disclosure. One of the most trusted names in Solana security.

Fuzzing (Trident)
Open term
Branch

Sec3 (formerly Soteria)

Solana security platform providing automated vulnerability detection, real-time program monitoring, and audit services. Their X-ray tool performs static analysis on Solana programs to detect common vulnerability patterns like missing signer checks and integer overflows.

Missing Signer Check
Open term
Branch

Neodyme

Security research firm specializing in Solana program auditing and vulnerability research. Published influential work on common Solana vulnerabilities and maintains educational resources on program security patterns. Based in Germany.

Open term
Next concepts to explore

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Security

OtterSec

Leading Solana security audit firm that has audited major protocols including Jupiter, Marinade, Jito, and the Solana runtime. Known for deep expertise in Rust/Solana program security and responsible vulnerability disclosure. One of the most trusted names in Solana security.

Open term
Security

Sec3 (formerly Soteria)

Solana security platform providing automated vulnerability detection, real-time program monitoring, and audit services. Their X-ray tool performs static analysis on Solana programs to detect common vulnerability patterns like missing signer checks and integer overflows.

Open term
Security

Neodyme

Security research firm specializing in Solana program auditing and vulnerability research. Published influential work on common Solana vulnerabilities and maintains educational resources on program security patterns. Based in Germany.

Open term
Security

Squads v4

The latest version of the Squads multisig protocol on Solana, offering improved transaction batching, spending limits, time-locks, sub-accounts (Squads Vaults), and role-based permissions. Squads v4 introduces a more gas-efficient design with fewer accounts per transaction and supports programmable execution conditions. It is widely used for managing program upgrade authorities, treasury wallets, and protocol governance on Solana mainnet.

Open term
Commonly confused with

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Securityaudit-severity

Audit Severity Levels

A standardized classification system for security audit findings: Critical (immediate fund loss or protocol compromise, must fix before deployment), High (significant risk of loss under specific conditions), Medium (limited risk or requires unlikely preconditions), Low (minor issues with minimal impact), and Informational (code quality, gas optimization, or best practice suggestions). Severity ratings help teams prioritize remediation and communicate risk to users. Most Solana audit firms (OtterSec, Ackee, sec3) follow this five-tier scale.

Open term
Securitysandwich-attack

Sandwich Attack

A form of MEV where an attacker places one transaction immediately before (front-run) and one immediately after (back-run) a victim's large AMM swap: the front-run buys the asset first, driving up the price the victim pays, and the back-run sells the asset immediately after the victim's transaction at the inflated price, extracting the difference as profit. On Solana, sandwich attacks are facilitated through Jito bundles, which allow searchers to atomically guarantee ordering of multiple transactions within a block. Victims can mitigate exposure by setting tight slippage tolerances (e.g., 0.1–0.5%) and using DEX aggregators that route across multiple pools to reduce single-pool price impact.

Open term
Related terms

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Securityottersec

OtterSec

Leading Solana security audit firm that has audited major protocols including Jupiter, Marinade, Jito, and the Solana runtime. Known for deep expertise in Rust/Solana program security and responsible vulnerability disclosure. One of the most trusted names in Solana security.

Open term
Securitysec3

Sec3 (formerly Soteria)

Solana security platform providing automated vulnerability detection, real-time program monitoring, and audit services. Their X-ray tool performs static analysis on Solana programs to detect common vulnerability patterns like missing signer checks and integer overflows.

Open term
Securityneodyme

Neodyme

Security research firm specializing in Solana program auditing and vulnerability research. Published influential work on common Solana vulnerabilities and maintains educational resources on program security patterns. Based in Germany.

Open term
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Security

Missing Signer Check

A vulnerability where a program accepts an account in a privileged role (e.g., admin, authority, payer) without verifying that the account actually signed the transaction, allowing any caller to impersonate that authority by simply passing the target pubkey as an instruction account. In native Solana programs, the check requires asserting account.is_signer == true; in Anchor, the Signer<'info> type enforces this automatically. Exploitation lets an attacker bypass all access control gated on authority equality checks, making it one of the most critical and commonly audited vulnerabilities in Solana programs.

Open term
Security

Missing Owner Check

A vulnerability where a program deserializes and trusts account data without first confirming that the account is owned by the expected program, allowing an attacker to substitute a maliciously crafted account owned by a different program whose byte layout happens to satisfy the deserialization. On Solana, every account stores a 32-byte owner field set to the program that created it; native programs must assert account.owner == &expected_program_id, while Anchor's Account<'info, T> wrapper performs this check automatically. Failure to validate ownership can lead to complete auth bypass if an attacker can construct a fake account whose data parses into a struct with elevated privileges.

Open term
Security

Arbitrary CPI

A vulnerability where a program accepts an arbitrary program account from the caller and invokes it via Cross-Program Invocation (CPI) without verifying it matches a known, trusted program ID, effectively letting an attacker substitute a malicious program that executes under the victim program's authority or manipulates accounts the victim program passes to it. A common pattern is accepting a token_program account without checking it equals spl_token::ID, so the attacker passes a lookalike program that records or drains account data. Prevention requires hard-coding or explicitly checking the program ID before every CPI call.

Open term
Security

PDA Substitution Attack

A vulnerability where a program derives a PDA internally but accepts an externally supplied account as that PDA without re-deriving and comparing the address, allowing an attacker to pass a different PDA (derived from attacker-controlled seeds) that the program will treat as legitimate. Because PDAs are deterministic, the only way to guarantee account identity is to call Pubkey::find_program_address (or equivalent) with the expected seeds inside the program and assert the result equals the supplied key. Anchor's seeds and bump constraints on the Account type automate this re-derivation and equality check.

Open term