Smart contract security audits assist you in identifying potential security vulnerabilities in your system.

They allow you to address these vulnerabilities before a malicious party takes advantage of them and ruins your platform.

What Is a Smart Contract Audit?

Code displayed on a laptop screen

This process is used to find bugs, technical issues, and security loopholes in the code.

With this, smart contract audit experts can recommend solutions and make changes.

Smart contract audits are typically required because most contracts deal with valuable items and financial assets.

Two people brainstorming over a paper near two open laptops

However, it does ensure that the smart contract is safe, having been evaluated by a tech expert.

Malicious entities use two main methods for launching a successful attack: Baiting and the Reentrancy attack.

Here are three noteworthy blockchain attacks.

Man in black hoodie using two macbooks

Wormhole

The Wormhole Bridge hack is the second-largest cryptocurrency attack to date.

The attacker took advantage of a loophole on the bridge to steal 120k Wrapped Ether worth $323 million.

They did this by forging a valid signature for a transaction without providing any collateral.

Group of people using laptop computers

The Cream Oracle technology and its method of calculating asset prices have significant limitations.

Inverse Finance

First, the attacker withdrew 901 ETH from Tornado Cashan Ethereum mixer.

Then the attacker used SushiSwap’s INV/WETH and INV/DOLA liquidity pools to trade them for INV.

Man writing code on two laptops and projecting on a monitor

It can tarnish a developer’s image and ruin projects that took months or years to launch.

As a result, smart contract auditing is now one ofthe development steps programmers takefor each new project.

A specification enables the audit team to understand the project’s goals when writing and running the code.

Usually, the README file for the project contains a description of the specification.

Unit Testing

Here, the developer’s responsibility is to write unit test cases.

While running unit tests, the auditor checks to see if the smart contract works as intended.

Additionally, tests provide smart contract auditors access to unofficial documentation that provides additional details about planned project functionality.

Manual Auditing

The most important part of the auditing process.

The auditor checks every line of the code for errors.

Auditors recommend a smart contract audit based on identified vulnerabilities and code optimization.

Final Report

The final stage in the smart contract audit process is the final writing of an audit report.

The auditors should complete the tests and manual and automatic analysis processes before producing a detailed audit report.

They publish the final report after taking into account any steps the team took to address the issues reported.

you’ve got the option to carry out a smart contract penetration test in three ways.

A tester inputs data and monitors the output generated by the smart contract undergoing the test.

Gray box testing looks for and pinpoints vulnerabilities due to poor, smart contract code structure or use.

The purpose of this test is to analyze the entire system thoroughly.

It determines the range and damage capacity of an attacking party.