What is the audit procedure for smart contracts? Deploying smart contracts on the blockchain network helps to improve operational transparency. However, the openness of blockchain smart contract code may expose its defects. Therefore, malicious users and hackers may violate smart contracts, resulting in the loss, theft and loss of consumer data or income. This article is about the general methods and types of smart contract audit.
The importance of contract audit has aroused people's interest in ingenious contract audit methods. The review of smart contracts helps to detect and verify vulnerabilities in the business logic of smart contracts. The concern about the cost of auditing the security of smart contracts makes it necessary to adopt audit mechanisms. The audit of smart contracts can be done manually or automatically, depending on your needs and budget.
It should also be noted that the audit of the smart contract evaluates whether the smart contract code conforms to the Solidity code style guide. In addition, the smart audit contract checks the code for logic or access control defects. In addition, we should also be aware of the differences in smart contract audit requirements between projects.
Manual audit requires an experienced auditor or subject matter expert to check every line of smart contract source code. This is one of the most thorough and accurate methods of smart contract audit, because it reveals design defects and coding problems. The main purpose of manual audit is to identify data input and compilation errors. Manual auditing also helps detect critical smart contract security vulnerabilities, such as invalid encryption programs that are often ignored.
There are two unique manual audit methods for smart contract codes. Auditors may manually check the code and verify the existence of common problems. On the other hand, developers may study code independently based on their expertise.
Concerns about human error may make it less important to manually examine the benefits of smart contract best practices. Automated auditing uses defect detection techniques to pinpoint the source of errors. Therefore, automatic smart contract audit may be a better way to discover security problems and vulnerabilities in smart contracts.
For projects that need to enter the market faster, automated smart contract auditing can be used. This is because automation speeds up the process of detecting vulnerabilities. However, automated auditing may not understand the context of auditing and prevent specific vulnerabilities from being checked in code.
The audit of smart contracts depends on a joint method, which may be different among competent contract auditors. The following summarizes the important stages of the smart contract audit method.
Before deploying the third-party smart contract, the auditor will obtain the code requirements of the smart contract. The auditor will analyze the architecture of the code to determine the goals and scope of the project.
Unit testing is the second step of the audit, which aims to discover security vulnerabilities in smart contracts. The auditor will examine various situations to evaluate the operability of the smart contract. The auditor of the smart contract may use manual and computer-based methods to ensure that the smart contract code is included in the unit test case.
For smart contracts, it may be difficult to make a decision between manual and computer-based audit methods. Manual auditors check every line of code for vulnerabilities, but automatic audit tools may miss the audit context and specific vulnerabilities. In addition, manual auditing helps identify the possibility of specific attacks, such as preemptive running. On the other hand, manual audit is a better way to evaluate smart contracts than automatic change.
Some innovative contract security audit service providers provide experts to help fix any defects found in the source code. After the audit process, the auditor will write a report detailing the code defects. In addition, this information will provide the auditor with suggestions to solve the problems found in the audit.
The last stage of the smart contract audit process is similar to the end of the project. In the final audit report, there will be a summary of the steps taken by the project team or external experts to solve the problem. The auditor cannot release final information until the code vulnerability is resolved.
To sum up, this is an introduction to the types and methods of smart contract audit. The complexity of innovation contract security issues is increasing, which requires regular audit of smart contracts. It is necessary to understand the operation of smart contract security and the appropriate methods to realize security functions.
