1. Preliminary Code Review and Familiarization Phase
Simply put, auditors ask the development team for all documentation related to the design and expected behavior of the smart contract. Auditors perform a preliminary analysis of the code to determine the overall consistency of the contract design.
2. Manual and Automatic Code Analysis
While manual code analysis examines every line of code to ensure that every detail of the smart contract specification is met, automated code analysis finds bugs that humans overlook. This check makes sure that fundamental standards like code organisation and design, avoiding redundant code, and anticipated behaviour are adhered to.
3. Identify Known Vulnerabilities
Finding security flaws is at the heart of smart contract audits. As there are many common Ethereum smart contract security issues, auditors have created a common checklist to identify such vulnerabilities such as:
Reentrancy - Reentrancy is the bug that led to the DOA crashing. In this, users initiate multiple transfers without sending any. Therefore, an attacker can trigger multiple withdrawals without submitting a single one.
Overflows and underflows – Since computers do not understand the concept of infinity, an attacker triggers the arithmetic operation by causing an output greater than the maximum overflow value and less than the minimum overflow value.
Block Gas Limit – When a blockchain project succeeds and accumulates a large amount of data, transactions begin to consume excessive amounts of gas. As a result, it is difficult to complete a transaction, which leads to vulnerabilities.
4. Performance Analysis
Then the auditors investigate whether the contract can fulfill the agreement and whether it is able to handle all possible variations when the contract is performed in the real world.
5. Gas Compliance and Optimization
The smart contract may not comply with local or industry regulations. Auditors look for regulatory compliance and recommend changes if necessary.
Networks charge gas prices to cover transaction costs. Auditors ensure that smart contract operations do not consume too much gas or transaction fees.
6. Live Testing
By deploying the contract to a local testnet and running a full test suite, auditors ensure that all code works as expected.
How can developers work around bugs before having the contract audited?
1. Get a development environment
To deploy contracts, develop applications, and even run tests, several development environment tools like Truffle make life easier for developers. Plus, you can use these tools to speed up your recurring tasks and debugging contracts.
2. Run static analysis tools
A developer can find code flaws and stylistic inconsistencies by utilising a static analysis tool. Solidity Linters can help you with the study of the style and safety guide. For instance, two automated vulnerability detectors are Slither and Mythril.
3. Recommendations for secure developments
In addition to the difficulties listed above, security flaws can lead to a variety of issues. Thus, developers should familiarize themselves with as many security vulnerabilities as possible.
Developers need to understand solidity models such as behavior, security, and economic models.
Developers should also consider other recommendations such as caution when making external calls and pull over push.
4. Run tests
Before putting a large amount of money on the line, contracts should run a full test suite for an extended period of time. This will help with early bug detection and detection of unexpected behavior.
Developers can use comprehensive research to evaluate the large-scale contract.
However, running tests alone will not secure the contract. Developers should also measure the effectiveness of these tests. One way to regularly run unit tests and monitor their effectiveness is to look for a hosted CI environment.
5. How to Deploy to Mainnet
Before you decide to deploy the contract on the mainnet, consider launching it on a public testnet. In particular, developers can opt to deploy the contract on the mainnet in beta versions. It will limit the amount of risk in the initial stages.
Additionally, during this testnet phase, consider running a bug bounty program where the developer community helps identify critical flaws in exchange for monetary rewards.
6. Event Monitoring
Another action that can promote operational excellence is putting in place an adequate monitoring system. If there are any real changes in the system, this monitoring system will notify the developers.
Conclusion
Since blockchain technology is still in its infancy, expect regular system improvements, as well as protection and bug fixes.
Nevertheless, following security practices is a fundamental concept that any developer and other interested parties should understand before creating a smart contract.
While developing an error-free smart contract is still a dream, the ability to respond effectively to vulnerabilities is a reality.
What a smart contract needs is a team of expert auditors who keep up to date with ever-changing industry trends. Contact our team of auditors for a free consultation to better understand the need for your smart contract audit.
