Analysis of the relationship between smart contracts' categories and vulnerabilities

Ibba, G.;Ortu, M.

2022-01-01

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Abstract

Smart Contracts are general-purpose programs that provide a higher level of security than traditional contracts and reduce other transaction costs associated with the bargaining practice, as they are executed in a Blockchain infrastructure. Developers use smart contracts to build their tokens and set up gambling games, crowd sales, ICO, and many others domains of application. The security of Smart Contracts is also crucial, as SCs at the very core level, move money. In recent years, researchers have provided a set of known vulnerabilities that afflict SCs. This study analyzed the relationship between the SC domain of application, domain category, and known vulnerabilities. We categorized the SC using the topic modeling on a curated dataset of SC annotated with know vulnerabilities. Indeed, we found that a certain category of SC is strongly associated with specific vulnerabilities.