Reentrancy Risk

Definition ∞ Reentrancy risk refers to a specific type of security vulnerability in smart contracts where an external malicious contract can repeatedly call back into the vulnerable contract before the initial execution is complete. This recursive calling allows the attacker to drain funds or manipulate state variables in an unintended manner. The flaw typically arises when a contract sends funds to an external address without updating its internal state first. It represents a severe threat to decentralized application security.
Context ∞ Reentrancy risk remains a critical security concern in smart contract development, often cited in post-mortem analyses of major DeFi exploits. A key discussion involves implementing best practices like checks-effects-interactions patterns and using reentrancy guards to prevent such attacks. Future security audits and developer education will continue to emphasize the importance of mitigating this pervasive vulnerability in blockchain code.