Security Vulnerabilities of Blockchain-Based Smart Contracts and Countermeasures: a Survey

EasyChair Preprint 6761

Abstract

A smart contract is a computer program that defines an agreement between multiple parties to follow specific logic and agreement and executes automatically when certain conditions are met. Recently, blockchain-based smart contracts have become popular due to their immunity, decentralization, and security insurance in a trust-less environment. However, they are extremely susceptible to various security risks, so it is necessary to conduct a systematic investigation of existing security countermeasures and use unified evaluation criteria. Although there have been some security investigations on blockchain-based smart contracts, they have failed to conduct a reasonable analysis of existing security solutions with a unified criterion. Therefore, in this article, we conduct a comprehensive investigation of the latest work on security in blockchain-based smart contracts. We proposed a system and security model representing smart contracts based on blockchain. On this basis, we analyzed the security requirements of blockchain and smart contracts, and we use these requirements as evaluation criteria to analyze the works under investigation. Based on the results of the analysis, we have identified a series of open research questions and future directions to stimulate research work on protecting blockchain-based smart contracts.

Keyphrases: Blockchain, Blockchain Smart contract, Cryptocurrency., Ethereum Smart Contract, Privacy, Security, smart contracts

@booklet{EasyChair:6761,
  author    = {Epherem Merete Sifra and Gaofei Wu},
  title     = {Security Vulnerabilities of Blockchain-Based Smart Contracts and Countermeasures: a Survey},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 6761},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2021}}