A vulnerable smart contract reflects more than just a nequice programming attempt. It may damage a developer's reputation and undo initiatives that took months or years to complete. Once a result, smart contract auditing is now one of the development steps those programmers follow for every new project. The process offers the following surprising benefits:
§ Improved protection from hackers
§ Avoids costly smart contract code errors
§ Safer decentralized financial products
§ Greater credit on the project and across the industry
§ Greater credibility in a sector that is getting more competitive
The ability for developers to do better, more enduring work that results in more secure products and applications is made possible by this smart contract audit. Furthermore, the audit report serves as a seal of approval from an outsourced professional for a new project, which investors and users can entrust.
The smart contract security audit process
A technique that is largely standard is used to audit a smart contract. While each auditor may take a slightly different approach, the standard procedure is as follows:
1. Define the Audit Scope
The design (and its intended use) and universal architecture define the smart contract and design specifications. A specification allows the audit team to understand the project's objectives when writing and executing code.
The specifications for smart contracts and other associated documents include thorough explanations of the project's architecture, development procedure, and design choices. Typically, the project's README record contains a description of the specification.
2. Unit Test
In this situation, creating unit test cases is the developer's responsibility. When running unit tests, the auditor verifies that the smart contract works as expected. At this point, smart contract auditors employ network testing and auditing tools to promise that unit testing covers all relevant risks.
In addition, testing provides smart contract auditors with non-formal documentation that provides additional details about the project's planned functionality.
3. Manual Audit
The most important segment of the audit process. The auditor checks each code risk for errors.
4. Automated Audit
After the manual audit, the auditor does a detailed audit of the code using audit tools such as Slither, Scribble, Mythril and MythX. Auditors suggest performing a smart contract audit based on discovered vulnerabilities and code optimization.
5. Initial Report
An initial draught of the report is created by the auditor, who also notes any inaccuracies they find. This document is then sent to the project development team for review and any necessary revisions.
6. Final Report
The final authoring of an audit report is the last step in the smart contract audit process. Auditors must complete both manual and automated testing and study processes before producing a detailed audit report. They publish the final report after taking into account all the steps the team took to resolve the reported issues.
