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Plain meaning

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An attack in which an adversary artificially distorts the price or data reported by an on-chain oracle — most commonly by executing large trades to move a spot-price oracle (such as one based on a single AMM's instantaneous price) — and then exploits protocols that consume that price for lending, liquidation, or derivatives settlement before the oracle corrects. Flash-loan-amplified oracle manipulation is particularly dangerous: an attacker borrows a large sum atomically, moves the price, exploits the manipulated price, and repays the loan in one transaction. Defenses include using time-weighted average prices (TWAPs), aggregating multiple independent oracle sources (e.g., Pyth's aggregate confidence interval, Switchboard's weighted median), and enforcing staleness and confidence-band checks on every consumed price feed.

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Oracle Manipulation (oracle-manipulation)
Category: Security
Definition: An attack in which an adversary artificially distorts the price or data reported by an on-chain oracle — most commonly by executing large trades to move a spot-price oracle (such as one based on a single AMM's instantaneous price) — and then exploits protocols that consume that price for lending, liquidation, or derivatives settlement before the oracle corrects. Flash-loan-amplified oracle manipulation is particularly dangerous: an attacker borrows a large sum atomically, moves the price, exploits the manipulated price, and repays the loan in one transaction. Defenses include using time-weighted average prices (TWAPs), aggregating multiple independent oracle sources (e.g., Pyth's aggregate confidence interval, Switchboard's weighted median), and enforcing staleness and confidence-band checks on every consumed price feed.
Related: Oracle, Price Feed, Flash Loan

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Branch

Oracle

A service that provides external data (prices, randomness) to on-chain programs. DeFi protocols rely on oracles for accurate price feeds to calculate collateral ratios, liquidation thresholds, and swap rates. Solana's primary oracles are Pyth (high-frequency price feeds) and Switchboard (general-purpose data feeds and VRF).

Pyth Network Switchboard

Open term

Branch

Price Feed

An on-chain account maintained by an oracle (Pyth or Switchboard) containing the current price, confidence interval, and timestamp for an asset pair (e.g., SOL/USD). DeFi programs read price feeds to calculate collateral values, trigger liquidations, and determine swap rates. Feed staleness must be checked to prevent using outdated prices.

Open term

Branch

Flash Loan

An uncollateralized loan that must be borrowed and repaid within the same transaction. If the loan isn't repaid by transaction end, the entire transaction reverts atomically. Flash loans enable arbitrage, collateral swaps, and self-liquidation with zero capital. On Solana, Solend and MarginFi offer flash loans; they're also used in sandwich attacks.

Lending Protocol Arbitrage

Open term

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DeFi

Oracle

A service that provides external data (prices, randomness) to on-chain programs. DeFi protocols rely on oracles for accurate price feeds to calculate collateral ratios, liquidation thresholds, and swap rates. Solana's primary oracles are Pyth (high-frequency price feeds) and Switchboard (general-purpose data feeds and VRF).

Open term

DeFi

Price Feed

An on-chain account maintained by an oracle (Pyth or Switchboard) containing the current price, confidence interval, and timestamp for an asset pair (e.g., SOL/USD). DeFi programs read price feeds to calculate collateral values, trigger liquidations, and determine swap rates. Feed staleness must be checked to prevent using outdated prices.

Open term

DeFi

Flash Loan

An uncollateralized loan that must be borrowed and repaid within the same transaction. If the loan isn't repaid by transaction end, the entire transaction reverts atomically. Flash loans enable arbitrage, collateral swaps, and self-liquidation with zero capital. On Solana, Solend and MarginFi offer flash loans; they're also used in sandwich attacks.

Open term

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

Related terms

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DeFioracle

Oracle

A service that provides external data (prices, randomness) to on-chain programs. DeFi protocols rely on oracles for accurate price feeds to calculate collateral ratios, liquidation thresholds, and swap rates. Solana's primary oracles are Pyth (high-frequency price feeds) and Switchboard (general-purpose data feeds and VRF).

Open term

DeFiprice-feed

Price Feed

An on-chain account maintained by an oracle (Pyth or Switchboard) containing the current price, confidence interval, and timestamp for an asset pair (e.g., SOL/USD). DeFi programs read price feeds to calculate collateral values, trigger liquidations, and determine swap rates. Feed staleness must be checked to prevent using outdated prices.

Open term

DeFiflash-loan

Flash Loan

An uncollateralized loan that must be borrowed and repaid within the same transaction. If the loan isn't repaid by transaction end, the entire transaction reverts atomically. Flash loans enable arbitrage, collateral swaps, and self-liquidation with zero capital. On Solana, Solend and MarginFi offer flash loans; they're also used in sandwich attacks.

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