Smart contracts are self-executing computer programs that run on blockchain networks and facilitate secure, transparent, decentralized transactions. The security of smart contracts has always been a critical issue in the blockchain community, and one of the major concerns in recent years is the prevalence of honeypots – malicious contracts designed to deceive users into depositing funds, only to find that they are unable to withdraw their money and have lost their original deposit. In this research, we present a novel classification of honeypots and introduce a new type of contract that enables the development of a future-proof method for detecting honeypots based on the contract owner and cash flow. We implement this method in the form of a detection tool called HoneyVader using symbolic execution to identify real-world honeypot contracts. We apply our tool to over 2 million contracts deployed on the Ethereum network and detect 139 honeypots. Using this tool, we uncover zero-day honeypots and new techniques used by attackers, in addition to the ones identified in previous works.
| Date | 24 Apr 2023 |
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| Original language | American English |
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| Awarding Institution | - École de technologie supérieure
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| Supervisor | Kaiwen Zhang (Supervisor) |
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Norouzi, M. (Author),
Zhang (Supervisor),
24 Apr 2023Student thesis: Master's thesis › Master in Engineering: Engineering