Blockchain Red Team — Novel Attack Technique Research & Exploitation

When to Use This vs Others

• Use this (Red Team) when you need new exploit ideas, patch bypass attempts, or forward-looking offensive research.
• Use blockchain-black-team for battle-tested historical attack matrices and known incident replay.
• Use blockchain-purple-team for systemic analysis on why defenses fail across architecture and operations.

Develop and execute attack techniques that haven't been seen in the wild yet. While the Black Team maps historical incidents, the Red Team invents the next generation of attacks.

When to Use

• Post-patch bypass testing (find new routes around Blue Team fixes)
• Zero-day research on smart contract patterns
• Novel economic attack modeling
• Defense evasion technique development
• Advanced MEV/sandwich/frontrunning research
• Pre-audit offensive stress testing

Red Team vs Black Team

| Aspect | Black Team | Red Team | |---|---|---| | Time orientation | Past → Present | Present → Future | | Source | Historical incidents | CTFs, audits, papers, original research | | Goal | Map known patterns | Discover unknown patterns | | Output | "This happened before" | "This could happen next" |

Research Sources

Primary (check weekly)

1. CTF Writeups — Paradigm CTF, Ethernaut, Damn Vulnerable DeFi, Capture the Ether
2. Audit Reports — Trail of Bits, OtterSec, Neodyme, Halborn, Certora, Zellic, Spearbit
3. Academic Papers — arXiv cs.CR, ACM CCS, USENIX Security, IEEE S&P
4. MEV Research — Flashbots, Jito Labs, Skip Protocol, MEV Share

Secondary

5. Framework Changes — Anchor releases, SPL updates, OpenZeppelin updates
6. Language Advisories — RustSec, npm advisories, Solidity compiler bugs
7. Formal Verification Findings — Certora rules, Echidna/Medusa campaigns

Attack Development Methodology

Phase 1: Technique Discovery

Scan sources for novel patterns. For each discovery:

• What is the core primitive being exploited?
• Is this a known pattern variant or genuinely new?
• Cross-check against Black Team references/attack-matrix.md

Phase 2: Weaponization

Transform research finding into concrete attack:

1. Identify target surface in protocol code (file:line)
2. Determine preconditions (what state is needed)
3. Develop attack sequence (step-by-step TX/action plan)
4. Estimate impact (funds at risk, protocol disruption)
5. Write PoC sketch (pseudocode or test case)

Phase 3: Defense Bypass Research

For each existing defense in target code:

1. Read the defense implementation
2. Ask: "What assumption does this defense make?"
3. Ask: "Can that assumption be violated?"
4. Try at least 3 bypass approaches:
   • Timing-based (race the defense)
   • State-based (reach unexpected state first)
   • Composition-based (combine with another operation)

Phase 4: Novel Economic Attacks

Beyond code bugs, explore economic mechanism failures:

• Game-theoretic analysis of protocol incentives
• Multi-agent collusion scenarios
• Cross-protocol composability attacks
• Liquidity crisis cascading models

Technique Categories

T1: Defense Bypass

Techniques to circumvent known patches. See references/bypass-techniques.md.

T2: Composition Attacks

Combining individually safe operations into exploits. See references/composition-attacks.md.

T3: Timing Attacks

Exploiting slot/block/epoch boundaries. See references/timing-attacks.md.

T4: Economic Mechanism Attacks

Game-theoretic and incentive-based exploits. See references/economic-attacks.md.

Report Format

# Red Team Report — {Protocol Name}

## New Techniques Discovered: N
## Existing Defense Bypasses Found: N

## {ID}: {Technique Name}
- **Category**: T1/T2/T3/T4
- **Novelty**: New / Variant of {existing}
- **Source**: {CTF/paper/original research}
- **Target Surface**: {file:line}
- **Preconditions**: {required state}
- **Attack Sequence**: {numbered steps}
- **Impact**: {funds/disruption estimate}
- **PoC**: {code}
- **Defense Recommendation**: {specific fix}

Cycling with Blue Team

Red Team finds → Blue Team fixes → Red Team re-tests (bypass attempts):

Red R1 → Blue fix → Red R2 (bypass) → Blue fix → ... → No bypasses found

On repeat runs: focus exclusively on bypassing new patches.