For every problem that smart contracts solve, they seem to introduce another. In a week in which EOS has made news for all the wrong reasons over a RAM vulnerability, a code auditor has revealed the prevalence of smart contract bugs. Security firm Hosho, which has forged a new partnership with community managers Amazix, has found that one in four projects contains critical vulnerabilities.
$1 Billion Is No Guarantee Against Bugs$1 billion. That’s the amount raised by the projects whose smart contracts Hosho has audited. The security company claims to have audited more smart contracts than any other industry player. Despite the significant human and financial resources at their disposal, many of these projects would have been crippled had they neglected to have their code thoroughly scrutinized. A quarter of the projects Hosho has audited were found to have critical bugs, and some 60% of all projects they saw had at least one security issue.
Ethereum, the ICO economy’s go-to launchpad, has been the worst affected, with stories abounding of exploitable code that’s led to hundreds of millions of dollars of ether being stolen or locked up. While smart contract platforms such as Stratis are pushing the availability of debugging deployment suites and professional decompilers that come with using C#, Ethereum’s Turing-complete system leaves greater margin for error. Identifying and eliminating all potential security holes is a Sisyphean task, and one which even experienced Solidity developers struggle with. Enlisting the support of a third party specializing in smart contract audits, while not foolproof, is the best bet against shipping bug-filled code.
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