Smart Contract Security: A Practitioners' Perspective

Smart contracts have been plagued by security incidents, which resulted in substantial financial losses. Given numerous research efforts in addressing the security issues of smart contracts, we wondered how software practitioners build security into smart contracts in practice. We performed a mixtur...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings / International Conference on Software Engineering pp. 1410 - 1422
Main Authors: Wan, Zhiyuan, Xia, Xin, Lo, David, Chen, Jiachi, Luo, Xiapu, Yang, Xiaohu
Format: Conference Proceeding
Language:English
Published: IEEE 01.05.2021
Subjects:
Blockchain
Continents
Empirical study
Practitioner
Security
Smart contract
Smart contracts
Software
Software engineering
ISBN:1665402962, 9781665402965
ISSN:1558-1225
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Smart contracts have been plagued by security incidents, which resulted in substantial financial losses. Given numerous research efforts in addressing the security issues of smart contracts, we wondered how software practitioners build security into smart contracts in practice. We performed a mixture of qualitative and quantitative studies with 13 interviewees and 156 survey respondents from 35 countries across six continents to understand practitioners' perceptions and practices on smart contract security. Our study uncovers practitioners' motivations and deterrents of smart contract security, as well as how security efforts and strategies fit into the development lifecycle. We also find that blockchain platforms have a statistically significant impact on practitioners' security perceptions and practices of smart contract development. Based on our findings, we highlight future research directions and provide recommendations for practitioners.
ISBN:1665402962
9781665402965
ISSN:1558-1225
DOI:10.1109/ICSE43902.2021.00127