Security is now one of the most important challenges for smart contract deployment. Because neglecting them while utilising a blockchain network to generate smart contracts might result in astronomically large additional costs, there are worries about inefficiency, security, and misbehaviour.
Minor code errors can also lead to the theft of substantial sums of money. For instance, the DAO attack on the Ethereum blockchain led to the hard split of the Ethereum network and the seizure of almost $60 million worth of ether.
Because smart contracts are irreversible, businesses are anxious about their deployment. Due to smart contract security flaws, you also face the risk of losing the whole contract and all related assets. As a result, smart contract auditing has grown in importance over the past few years for the following reasons:
- Avoid costly bugs: You may prevent potentially fatal errors after release by auditing your code early in the development process.
- Professional review: Veteran security auditors hand-verify your code to remove erroneous findings.
- Prevent security assaults by keeping an eye out for potential security issues while you develop and edit code.
- Enhanced Security: Decentralized product owners are reassured that their code is secure via smart contract security auditing.
- Continuous security evaluation: By allowing you to do continuous security assessments, the smart contract audit procedure offers to enhance your development environment.
- Analytical reports: A vulnerability report includes an executive summary, information on the vulnerability, and mitigating advice.
How to perform a smart contract audit?
An auditing service for smart contracts applies known vulnerability tests to the specific business logic of each smart contract. Additionally, it determines whether the smart contract complies with the Solidity Code Style Guide and confirms that there are no logical or access control errors. Projects have different specifications for smart contract security assessments. As will be discussed below, smart contracts may be audited manually or automatically.
Manual Audit
In manual auditing, a team of experts/auditors looks for build and re-entry errors in every line of code. Additionally, it can assist in identifying other frequently disregarded security flaws including improper encryption techniques.
Manual code analysis can take two forms:
- Conduct a free exploratory check using the developer's firsthand knowledge.
· Confirm a standard list of failures.
This approach is regarded as the most accurate and comprehensive since it finds hidden problems such as design challenges rather than just coding faults.
To increase the identification of possible smart contract code vulnerabilities, manual inspection is a must.
An expert audit team assesses the choices to certify that a project performs in accordance with the anticipated functions. Smart contract auditors can make solid suggestions for improving the smart contract project team based on their findings.
Automated Audit
The automated smart contract auditing method, in contrast, makes use of error detection software to assist smart contract auditors in locating the precise area where faults are to blame. An automated technique is frequently used for projects that need a quicker time to market since it helps uncover vulnerabilities much more quickly. However, while inspecting code, automated tools cannot always be able to comprehend the context and might overlook flaws.
Automated analysis tools in smart contract auditing make it easier to spot common coding issues, which speeds up the audit process.
Additionally, they can ensure faster reaction times while enabling independence from reliance on human auditors. Auditors may concentrate their attention on brand-new, complicated vulnerabilities thanks to automated scanning.
Although the cost of smart contract auditing may undoubtedly be reduced with automated analysis, Solidity-specific automated analysis tools are still being developed. As a result, it will take a while for smart contract audits to reach the appropriate level of perfection.
Additionally, automated analysis methods are blind to the environment in which a particular code was written. As a result, these technologies could frequently produce false positives in addition to falsely asserting the existence of issues. You will now need to consult the analysis manual for each discovered vulnerability.
Code Error Classification
Each source code flaw is rated for severity, taking into account whether an exploit could have a high, medium, low, or informational impact.
Exploitation Difficulty
The difficulty of exploiting each flaw discovered is another important characteristic.
