Ava Labs Avalanche

Ava Labs Avalanche Protocol

Ava Labs makes it simple to deploy high-performance solutions for Web3, led by innovations on Avalanche. The company was founded by Cornell computer scientists, who partnered with Wall Street veterans and early Web3 leaders to execute a promising vision for redefining the way people build and use open, permissionless networks. Ava Labs is redefining the way people create value with Web3.

For more information about Ava Labs, please visit https://www.avalabs.org/

Ava Labs provides rewards in USDC and locked AVAX, denominated in USD. For more details about the payment process, please view the Rewards by Threat Level section further below.

KYC Requirement

Ava Labs will be requesting KYC information in order to pay for successful bug submissions. The following information will be required:

• Full name
• Date of birth
• Proof of address (either a redacted bank statement with address or a recent utility bill)
• Copy of Passport or other Government issued ID

Eligibility Criteria

Security researchers who wish to participate must adhere to the rules of engagement set forth in this program and cannot be:

• On OFACs SDN list
• Official contributor, both past or present
• Employees and/or individuals closely associated with the project
• Security auditors that directly or indirectly participated in the audit review

Responsible Publication

Ava Labs adheres to category 3. This Policy determines what information researchers are allowed to make public from their submitted bug reports. For more information about the category selected, please refer to our Responsible Publication page.

Primacy of Impact vs Primacy of Rules

Ava Labs adheres to the Primacy of Rules, which means that the whole bug bounty program is run strictly under the terms stated in this page.

Proof of Concept (PoC) Requirements

A PoC, demonstrating the bug's impact, is required for this program and has to comply with the Immunefi PoC Guidelines and Rules.

Known Issue Assurance

Ava Labs commits to providing Known Issue Assurance to bug submissions through their program. This means that Ava Labs will either disclose known issues publicly, or at the very least, privately via a self-reported bug submission.

In a potential scenario of a mediation, this allows for a more objective and streamlined process, in order to prove that an issue is known. Otherwise, assuming the bug report is valid, it would result in the report being considered as in-scope, and due a reward.

Previous Audits

Ava Labs’s completed audit reports can be found in the following link:

• https://github.com/ava-labs/audits

Feasibility Limitations

The project may be receiving reports that are valid (the bug and attack vector are real) and cite assets and impacts that are in scope, but there may be obstacles or barriers to executing the attack in the real world. In other words, there is a question about how feasible the attack really is. Conversely, there may also be mitigation measures that projects can take to prevent the impact of the bug, which are not feasible or would require unconventional action and hence, should not be used as reasons for downgrading a bug's severity.

Therefore, Immunefi has developed a set of feasibility limitation standards which by default states what security researchers, as well as projects, can or cannot cite when reviewing a bug report.

Immunefi Standard Badge

By adhering to Immunefi’s best practice recommendations, Ava Labs has satisfied the requirements for the Immunefi Standard Badge.

Rewards are distributed according to the impact of the vulnerability based on the Immunefi Vulnerability Severity Classification System V2.3.

For critical Blockchain/DLT bugs, the reward amount is 10% of the funds directly affected, capped at the maximum critical reward USD $100,000. For critical Blockchain/DLT bugs with a non-funds-at risk impact, the reward will be paid out as follows:

• Network not being able to confirm new transactions (total network shutdown) USD $100,000
• Unintended permanent chain split requiring hard fork (network partition requiring hard fork) USD $100,000
• Permanent freezing of funds (fix requires hardfork) USD $100,000

For high Blockchain/DLT non-funds-at risk impacts, the reward will be paid out as follows:

• Causing network processing nodes to process transactions from the mempool beyond set parameters USD $5,000

For critical smart contract bugs, the reward amount is 10% of the funds directly affected up to a maximum of USD 100 000. The calculation of the amount of funds at risk is based on the time and date the bug report is submitted. However, a minimum reward of USD 10 000 is to be rewarded in order to incentivize security researchers against withholding a critical bug report.

NOTE: Smart contracts deployed by third-parties on Avalanche are EXPLICITLY OUT OF SCOPE. This bug bounty ONLY includes the smart contracts listed as in scope below.

Repeatable Attack Limitations

• If the smart contract where the vulnerability exists can be upgraded or paused, only the initial attacks within the first hour will be considered for a reward. This is because the project can mitigate the risk of further exploitation by upgrading or pausing the component where the vulnerability exists. The reward amount will depend on the severity of the impact and the funds at risk.

• For critical repeatable attacks on smart contracts that cannot be upgraded or paused, the project will consider the cumulative impact of the repeatable attacks for a reward. This is because the project cannot prevent the attacker from repeatedly exploiting the vulnerability until all funds are drained and/or other irreversible damage is done. Therefore, this warrants a reward equivalent to 10% of funds at risk, capped at the maximum critical reward.

Reward Calculation for High Level Reports

• High vulnerabilities concerning theft/permanent freezing of unclaimed yield/royalties are considered at the full amount of funds at risk, capped at the maximum high reward. This is to incentivize security researchers to uncover and responsibly disclose vulnerabilities that may have not have significant monetary value today, but could still be damaging to the project if it goes unaddressed.

• In the event of temporary freezing, the reward increases at a multiplier of two from the full frozen value for every additional 24h that the funds are temporarily frozen, up until a max cap of the high reward. This is because as the duration of the freezing lenghents, the potential for greater damage and subsequent reputational harm intensifies. Thus, by increasing the reward proportionally with the frozen duration, the project ensures stronger incentives for bug disclosure of this nature.

Reward Payment Terms

Payouts are handled by the Ava Labs team directly and are denominated in USD.

Please note: In cases where the size of the reward exceeds an equivalent of 10 000 USD, Ava Labs is entitled to make the payment in one-year locked AVAX at the rate calculated based on the VWAP of AVAX during 90 calendar days preceding the date of the respective validated report.

Ava Labs’s codebase can be found at https://github.com/ava-labs. Documentation and further resources can be found on https://docs.avax.network/. For details on standing up a local test network, sees https://docs.avax.network/tooling/network-runner.

These impacts are out of scope for this bug bounty program.

All Categories:

• Impacts requiring attacks that the reporter has already exploited themselves, leading to damage
• Impacts caused by attacks requiring access to leaked keys/credentials
• Impacts caused by attacks requiring access to privileged addresses (governance, strategist) except in such cases where the contracts are intended to have no privileged access to functions that make the attack possible
• Impacts relying on attacks involving the depegging of an external stablecoin where the attacker does not directly cause the depegging due to a bug in code
• Mentions of secrets, access tokens, API keys, private keys, etc. in Github will be considered out of scope without proof that they are in-use in production
• Best practice recommendations
• Feature requests
• Impacts on test files and configuration files unless stated otherwise in the bug bounty program
• If a bug is publicly disclosed (in the repo of an "asset in scope" or otherwise), that bug is considered out-of-scope in this program.
• If a bug is publicly disclosed in a dependency of any of the "assets in scope", that bug is considered out-of-scope in this program.

Coreth/Subnet-EVM

• If a bug is publicly disclosed in https://github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum, that bug is considered out-of-scope in this program.
• If a bug is publicly disclosed in https://github.com/ava-labs/subnet-evm that affects https://github.com/ava-labs/coreth (or vice-versa), that bug is considered out-of-scope in this program.

Blockchain/DLT & Smart Contract Specific:

• Impacts requiring basic economic and governance attacks (e.g. 51% attack)
• Impacts from Sybil attacks
• Network-level Denial-of-Service (TCP/IP/P2P)
• Misconfigurations of AvalancheGo nodes currently running on the Avalanche Network
• Denial-of-Service, OOM, or panic on any API exposed by AvalancheGo
• Impacts involving centralization risks
• Any usage of the node's HTTP API through intended mediums. Intended mediums include usage:
  • requiring direct machine access
  • through explicitly opened RPC ports
  • This includes the ability to send HTTP requests that cause node panics, OOMs, increased disk usage, or causing the node to become unhealthy.
• Consensus liveness failure requiring network control.
• Ex: BGP hijacking attacks
• Preventing a node from properly connecting to the P2P network due to brute force networking DoS vectors.
  • Ex: Syn attacking a specific node with a botnet.
• Unintended node behavior caused by local disk failures.
• Unintended node behavior caused by unusual node configuration deviating from best practices for node configurations
• Compile time or runtime errors due to using unsupported hardware or operating systems.
• Inability to automatically perform NAT-hole punching on specific router hardware.

Prohibited Activities:

• Any testing with pricing oracles or third-party smart contracts
• Attempting phishing or other social engineering attacks against our employees and/or customers
• Any testing of third-party systems and applications (e.g. browser extensions) as well as websites (e.g. SSO providers, advertising networks)
• Any denial of service attacks that are executed against project assets
• Automated testing of services that generates significant amounts of traffic
• Public disclosure of an unpatched vulnerability in an embargoed bounty

Even if a bug is considered out-of-scope but you feel it should be disclosed privately, we appreciate any and all informational disclosures through this portal. Thanks for your responsible disclosure!