Towards automated safety vetting of smart contracts in decentralized applications

• Main Authors: DUAN, Yue, ZHAO, Xin, PAN, Yu, LI, Shucheng, LI, Minghao, XU, Fengyuan, ZHANG, Mu
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2022
• Subjects: decentralized apps; smart contracts; safety verification; semantics; Information Security
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/sis_research/8139; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/sis_research/article/9142/viewcontent/3548606.3559384.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

We propose VetSC, a novel UI-driven, program analysis guided model checking technique that can automatically extract contract semantics in DApps so as to enable targeted safety vetting. To facilitate model checking, we extract business model graphs from contract code that capture its intrinsic business and safety logic. To automatically determine what safety specifications to check, we retrieve textual semantics from DApp user interfaces. To exclude untrusted UI text, we also validate the UI-logic consistency and detect any discrepancies. We have implemented VetSC and applied it to 34 real-world DApps. Experiments have demonstrated that VetSC can accurately interpret smart contract code, enable autonomous safety vetting, and discover safety risks in real-world Dapps. Using our tool, we have successfully discovered 19 new safety risks in the wild, such as expired lottery tickets and double voting.