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Related papers: Precise Attack Synthesis for Smart Contracts

200 papers

Recent years have seen smart contracts are getting increasingly popular in building trustworthy decentralized applications. Previous research has proposed static and dynamic techniques to detect vulnerabilities in smart contracts. These…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2022-07-06 Jiaming Ye , Mingliang Ma , Yun Lin , Lei Ma , Yinxing Xue , Jianjun Zhao

The widespread lack of broad source code verification on blockchain explorers such as Etherscan, where despite 78,047,845 smart contracts deployed on Ethereum (as of May 26, 2025), a mere 767,520 (< 1%) are open source, presents a severe…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2025-06-25 Isaac David , Liyi Zhou , Dawn Song , Arthur Gervais , Kaihua Qin

In this work, we provide a comprehensive survey of smart contract upgradability patterns using proxies. A primary characteristic of smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain is that they are immutable once implemented, no changes can be…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2023-04-10 Sajad Meisami , William Edward Bodell

Smart contracts are Turing-complete programs running on the blockchain. They cannot be modified, even when bugs are detected. The Selfdestruct function is the only way to destroy a contract on the blockchain system and transfer all the…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2020-10-07 Jiachi Chen

Smart contracts are programs that manage digital assets according to a certain protocol, expressing for instance the rules of an auction. Understanding the possible behaviors of a smart contract is difficult, which complicates development,…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2018-07-23 Florentin Guth , Valentin Wüstholz , Maria Christakis , Peter Müller

Most blockchains cannot hide the binary code of programs (i.e., smart contracts) running on them. To conceal proprietary business logic and to potentially deter attacks, many smart contracts are closed-source and employ layers of…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2025-09-09 Sen Yang , Kaihua Qin , Aviv Yaish , Fan Zhang

Smart contracts are small but highly error-prone programs that implement agreements between multiple parties. We present a reactive synthesis approach for the automatic construction of smart contract state machines. Towards this end, we…

Logic in Computer Science · Computer Science 2023-07-28 Bernd Finkbeiner , Jana Hofmann , Florian Kohn , Noemi Passing

The rise of decentralized applications (dApps) has made smart contracts imperative components of blockchain technology. As many smart contracts process financial transactions, their security is paramount. Moreover, the immutability of…

Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing · Computer Science 2024-07-24 Khalid Hassan , Saeed Moradi , Shaiful Chowdhury , Sara Rouhani

Smart contracts are essential to decentralized finance (DeFi) and blockchain ecosystems but are increasingly vulnerable to exploits due to coding errors and complex attack vectors. Traditional static analysis tools and existing…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2025-02-20 Jun Kevin , Pujianto Yugopuspito

In this paper, we investigate the strategies adopted by Solidity developers to fix security vulnerabilities in smart contracts. Vulnerabilities are categorized using the DASP TOP 10 taxonomy, and fixing strategies are extracted from GitHub…

Smart contracts written in Solidity are widely used in different blockchain platforms such as Ethereum, TRON and BNB Chain. One of the unique designs in Solidity smart contracts is its state-reverting mechanism for error handling and access…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2024-06-25 Zeqin Liao , Sicheng Hao , Yuhong Nan , Zibin Zheng

The immutable nature of blockchain technology, while revolutionary, introduces significant security challenges, particularly in smart contracts. These security issues can lead to substantial financial losses. Current tools and approaches…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2024-11-05 Zhiyuan Wei , Jing Sun , Zijiang Zhang , Xianhao Zhang , Meng Li , Zhe Hou

This article conducts an extensive examination of the persisting challenges related to smart contract attacks within blockchain networks, with a particular focus on the reentrancy attack. It emphasizes the inherent vulnerabilities embedded…

Social and Information Networks · Computer Science 2023-10-05 Simone Casale-Brunet , Marco Mattavelli

Smart contracts are susceptible to critical vulnerabilities. Hybrid dynamic analyses, such as concolic execution assisted fuzzing and foundation model assisted fuzzing, have emerged as highly effective testing techniques for smart contract…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2024-09-10 Sally Junsong Wang , Jianan Yao , Kexin Pei , Hidedaki Takahashi , Junfeng Yang

Advanced software supply chain (SSC) attacks are increasingly runtime-only and leave fragmented evidence across hosts, services, and build/dependency layers, so any single telemetry stream is inherently insufficient to reconstruct full…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2026-03-18 Zhuoran Tan , Wenbo Guo , Taylor Brierley , Jiewen Luo , Jeremy Singer , Christos Anagnostopoulos

In recent years, the Ethereum platform has witnessed a proliferation of smart contracts, accompanied by exponential growth in total value locked (TVL). High-TVL smart contracts often require complex numerical computations, particularly in…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2025-03-14 Jiachi Chen , Zhenzhe Shao , Shuo Yang , Yiming Shen , Yanlin Wang , Ting Chen , Zhenyu Shan , Zibin Zheng

Smart contracts on Ethereum handle millions of U.S. Dollars and other financial assets. In the past, attackers have exploited smart contracts to steal these assets. The Ethereum community has developed plenty of tools to detect vulnerable…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2022-02-28 Chavhan Sujeet Yashavant , Saurabh Kumar , Amey Karkare

Ethereum smart contracts are programs that can be collectively executed by a network of mutually untrusted nodes. Smart contracts handle and transfer assets of values, offering strong incentives for malicious attacks. Intrusion attacks are…

Software Engineering · Computer Science 2019-11-28 Xinming Wang , Jiahao He , Zhijian Xie , Gansen Zhao , Shing-Chi Cheung

Smart contracts are nowadays at the core of most blockchain systems, as they specify and allow an agreement between entities that wish to perform a transaction. As any computer program, smart contracts are subject to the presence of…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2024-07-19 Fernando Richter Vidal , Naghmeh Ivaki , Nuno Laranjeiro

Smart contracts underpin high-value ecosystems such as decentralized finance (DeFi), yet recurring vulnerabilities continue to cause losses worth billions of dollars. Although numerous security analyzers that detect such flaws exist,…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2026-03-03 Tamer Abdelaziz , Salma Alsaghir , Karim Ali