The Flash Loan Attack Analysis (FAA) Framework-A Case Study of the Warp Finance Exploitation

Decentralized finance (DeFi) has exploded in popularity with a billion-dollar market cap. While uncollateralized lending, known as a flash loan, emerged from DeFi, it has become a primary tool used by attackers to drain investment tokens from DeFi networks. The existing countermeasures seem practical, but no comprehensive quantitative analysis framework was available to test them. This paper proposes the Flash loan Attack Analysis (FAA) framework, which aids security practitioners in understanding the DeFi system's effects on preventative methods when various factors change. The quantitative predictions can help security professionals in identifying hidden dangers and more efficiently adopting countermeasure strategies. The simulation predicts that the existing strategy, fair reserves, can fully protect the platform in a typical market environment; however, in a highly volatile market where the token price drops by 60% in a single hour, it will be broken, causing more than $8 million in damage.

Automated summary

Decentralized finance (DeFi) has gained significant popularity and a billion-dollar market cap. However, uncollateralized lending, also known as a flash loan, has become a major tool used by attackers to exploit DeFi networks. This paper introduces the Flash loan Attack Analysis (FAA) framework, which provides a quantitative analysis of the impacts of different factors on the effectiveness of preventative measures in the DeFi system. The simulation results show that the existing strategy can fully protect the platform in a normal market environment but fails in a highly volatile market, causing significant financial losses.