Protecting Smart Contracts on TON Blockchain from Cyberattacks

What is a Smart Contract?

As per Jake Frankenfield, a smart contract is an agreement between a buyer and seller written entirely in computer code and then automatically executes itself.

In my opinion, smart contracts will be the fundamental building blocks for web 3.0 and will govern many obligations between businesses in the coming years.

This necessitates discussing how secure smart contracts are and how we can make them more robust and secure.

What is Software Code Verification, and Why Does It Matter?

Code verification is the procedure used to evaluate software code for bugs that may have been created during the development phase. As per Chris Adams, inspection, demonstration, testing, and analysis are the four cornerstones of verification.

Each of the four techniques is somewhat hierarchical since it provides more stringent product or system requirements verification. Putting a product or system through its paces involves subjecting it to a carefully planned and simulated set of inputs, data, or stimuli to see whether it behaves as expected and delivers the desired results.

I believe that a thorough, smart contract assessment is necessary to check the quality of the source code since this is the only way to guarantee that the code compiles correctly and achieves its intended purpose when run on the target platform.

I believe the likelihood of software failures and pricey smart contract attacks may be reduced due to thorough testing. Considering the smart contract code cannot be amended after it is released from the production environment, testing and verifications are fundamental to building robust smart contracts!

Understanding Why Smart Contracts Need to be Cyber Secure

Improper smart contract deployment during development and inadequate security procedures have led to several instances of hacked platforms operating on smart contracts.

As per a report by Bankless Times, in 2022, the total amount of funds lost to smart contract hacks is 2.7 billion dollars. In my opinion, verifying and testing smart contracts before deployment is a critical piece of the puzzle that developers and product managers need to focus on to reduce smart contract exploitation by bad actors.

Cyberattacks and potential vulnerabilities like reentrancy, front running, integer overflow/underflow, DoS, Insufficient Gas briefing, RCE, and many other attacks can be mitigated by carefully planning, designing, and developing smart contracts.

Hackers constantly look for security weaknesses, so we should never assume that a smart contract is bug-free. Therefore, verifying and testing smart contracts at every level is critical to map all the possible vulnerabilities.

Orbs Launches TON Verifier to Verify Smart Contract code

Orbs, a Layer-3 blockchain solutions provider, has released its TON Verifier. The Open Network (TON) chain developers may now submit their trusted source code through the open-source application. Increased visibility into the TON chain is a major accomplishment for the TON Verifier.

Orbs uses a decentralized system to protect the validity of smart contracts. Users may save themselves some hassle using the TEP-91 solution. Anybody may quickly and easily create their verifier, add it to the registry, and commence assigning stuff.

IPFS is used first to store all the data and then migrated to TON as it becomes available. The submission of smart contract code for verification ensures that the code is compatible with the on-chain implementation and can be verified by signing the hash proof.

The verification software gathers all the relevant information and checks it against the source to ensure the contract's validity.

A bit-oriented code is issued if everything checks out; the user may provide this to the verifier and source registries.

Consequently, the user is provided with guidance on how to get the proper hash if the compilation fails or a hash mismatch occurs.

This is a critical feature that helps developers verify smart contracts properly and ensure their functioning as per the intended outcome!

Further, users may raise awareness of smart contract exploits by marking potentially deceptive code. This critical feature helps developers create a common pool of knowledge that can help reduce cyber attacks and smart contract exploitation by hackers.

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Image credits: Christopher Gower, Shamin Haky, and Mohammad Rahmani.