Proxy Hunting: Understanding and Characterizing Proxy-based Upgradeable Smart Contracts in Blockchains
Proxy Hunting: Understanding and Characterizing Proxy-based Upgradeable Smart Contracts in Blockchains
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发表时间：
2023
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通讯作者：
William Edward Bodell;Sajad Meisami;Yue Duan
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作者：
William Edward Bodell;Sajad Meisami;Yue Duan
可升级的智能合约（USC）已成为智能合约开发的主要趋势，为原本不可变的代码带来了灵活性。然而，它们也带来了安全问题。一方面，它们需要广泛的安全知识才能以安全的方式实施。另一方面，它们为恶意活动提供了新的战略武器。因此，充分理解它们，特别是它们在现实世界中的安全影响至关重要。为此，我们进行了大规模研究，系统揭示了野外 USC 的现状。为了实现我们的目标，我们开发了一个完整的 USC 分类法，以全面描述 USC 的独特行为，并进一步开发 USC H UNT，这是一个支持我们研究的自动化 USC 分析框架。我们的研究旨在回答有关南加州大学重要性、设计模式和安全问题的三组基本研究问题。我们的结果表明，USC 对当今的区块链非常重要，因为它们持有价值数十亿美元的数字资产。此外，我们的研究总结了 USC 的 11 种独特设计模式，并发现了六大类总共 2,546 个与 USC 相关的现实安全问题。
Upgradeable smart contracts (USCs) have become a key trend in smart contract development, bringing flexibility to otherwise immutable code. However, they also introduce security concerns. On the one hand, they require extensive security knowledge to implement in a secure fashion. On the other hand, they provide new strategic weapons for malicious activities. Thus, it is crucial to fully understand them, especially their security implications in the real-world. To this end, we conduct a large-scale study to systematically reveal the status quo of USCs in the wild. To achieve our goal, we develop a complete USC taxonomy to comprehensively characterize the unique behaviors of USCs and further develop U SC H UNT , an automated USC analysis framework for supporting our study. Our study aims to answer three sets of essential research questions regarding USC importance, design patterns, and security issues. Our results show that USCs are of great importance to today’s blockchain as they hold billions of USD worth of digital assets. Moreover, our study summarizes eleven unique design patterns of USCs, and discovers a total of 2,546 real-world USC-related security and safety issues in six major categories.