Questions tagged [security]
Questions relating to application security, safety, trust, and attacks against the Ethereum software stack and blockchain system.
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How can I securely generate a random number in my smart contract?
If I am writing a smart contract for some kind of (gambling) game, how can I generate a random number securely? What are the best practises and security trade-offs to be aware of?
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votes
4
answers
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<address>.send vs <address>.transfer best practice usage?
I noticed that address's offer two member functions that perform the transfer of ether to the specified address. send returns false upon failure and transfer raises an exception. In the Solidity ...
- 1,035
70
votes
3
answers
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Why can't contracts make API calls?
The model that contracts can only accept and process data, instead of also being able to retrieve data from the Internet, seems limiting (even if not, it's less direct).
If a concern is that data or ...
eth♦
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What number of confirmations is considered secure in Ethereum?
In Bitcoin, 6 confirmations are considered secure (very low probability of transaction/block reversal).
What is the current number in Ethereum?
eth♦
- 85.1k
64
votes
7
answers
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How can I verify that a contract on the blockchain matches the source code?
Given the (Solidity) source code of a smart contract, is there a way to deterministically compile the code and compare it with the code on the blockchain? I want to verify that the contract does what ...
- 8,911
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How to reduce the chances of your Ethereum wallet getting hacked?
Summary
The hack that occurred on May 12 2016 to steal 7,218 ethers from Patrick only affects miners where:
Incoming RPC connections from the Internet on TCP port 8545 are forwarded to the machine ...
- 40.2k
51
votes
4
answers
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Is there anything stopping me from using the ethereum blockchain as data storage?
As I understand it, smart contracts are currently immortal by default. Does this mean that I could create a contract that happened to contain an encoded form of baby photos and have it stored forever? ...
- 1,405
50
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3
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What is a recursive calling vulnerability?
What is a recursive calling vulnerability exactly?
When creating smart contracts, DAOs or DAPPs, what measures can I take to ensure I am not vulnerable?
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3
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Can a contract safely rely on block.timestamp?
How safe is it to use block.timestamp as contract expiration time? If a miner provides an incorrect timestamp in a block header, how much can it be off before it is rejected by other nodes? Is there a ...
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39
votes
2
answers
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Is each Ethereum address shared by (theoretically) 2 ** 96 private keys?
Summary
This is an extended question to How are ethereum addresses generated?.
In Ethereum, a private key is 256-bit long, but an address is only 160-bit long. By "Pigeonhole Principle", it ...
37
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1
answer
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When can BLOCKHASH be safely used for a random number? When would it be unsafe?
I've seen more complicated ways for a contract to generate a random number. But the Ethereum Yellow Paper itself suggests a "trivial solution" using the BLOCKHASH opcode (see below, bold is mine).
...
eth♦
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Ethereum smart contract security checklist
Is there a tool, checklist of methodology to help reviewing smart contract security?
E.g. for each of function you review
Is there re-entry possibility and how it behaves on re-entry
How it behaves ...
- 21.8k
30
votes
3
answers
4k
views
Is Ethereum secure against an attack by quantum computers?
Does Ethereum implement Post-quantum cryptography? Or will the network break once a malicious actor gains control of an effective quantum computer?
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3
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How can I make new account by JSON-RPC?
I'd like to make new account by JSON-RPC.I've checked the wiki of Ethereum, however I could not find out how to do that.
I've found call existed accounts, but it isn't what I want.
eth_accounts
...
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6
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Is there a way to generate ethereum paper wallets?
Is it possible to store ether on paper wallets or generate printable private keys offline somehow?
- 32.8k
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3
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How do gas refunds work?
Gas refunds are provided when clearing storage or calling SELFDESTRUCT on contracts.
The Yellow Paper mentions that refunds are "being capped up to a maximum of half...". What exactly is ...
eth♦
- 85.1k
25
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What if I had the private key that had the public address of a contract?
Could I spend the money a contract owns if I had the private key that goes to the public address that a contract resides at? (I realize that I'd have a better chance of being struck by lightning ...
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Is Solidity block.number more secure than timestamp?
In Solidity, some properties such as block.timestamp are attackable by miners and are not (strongly) protected by the protocol. How about block.number, could a miner introduce a randomly high number?
...
- 8,704
23
votes
3
answers
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Account uniqueness guaranteed?
When we create an account in the Ethereum main network, how does the protocol guarantee the unique address of an account? Since even if we are not connected to the network we can create an account, is ...
- 1,922
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3
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How does the Ethereum ETH accounting system work and prevent double-spends?
In Bitcoin, the BTC accounting system is based on UTXOs (Unspent Transaction Outputs), which prevents the same BTC from being spent multiple times. I heard that Ethereum has a simpler account balance ...
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What are effective techniques to encrypt/decrypt data stored in a smart contract?
Rather than sending and storing plain text in a smart contract, the use case objective is to encrypt first and then subsequently access the data and decrypt at the point of use.
What is the most ...
- 1,655
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3
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TheDAO hack FAQ: How did the attack happen on 17 June 2016?
Can anyone explain that how the DAO attack happened? Vitalik Buterin explained here that it was performed by splitting a DAO from the main DAO but calling the split function recursively.
We know that ...
21
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4
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Does Web3.js have the functionality to create new accounts and unlock an account for a period of time for a series of transactions?
I want to create new accounts through my Dapp web interface and unlock a specific account so that transactions can be processed. I didn't see it in the web3.js documentation so wonder if that's on the ...
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Is it safe to reuse Ether addresses?
I believe it's viewed as unsafe in Bitcoin because of the way transactions are signed. Is this also true for Ether addresses?
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How does Oraclize handle the TLSnotary secret?
Oraclize claims to offer a provably honest secure retrieval of a webpage by taking advantage of TLSnotary (a service that allows an auditor to verify if a specific web page was accurately retrieved)
...
- 22k
20
votes
2
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Is transfer() still safe after the Istanbul update?
In other words, is using transfer() safe?
function transfer(address contractB) public
{
contractB.transfer(1000);
//balances[msg.sender] -= 1000;
}
How about using call.gas?
function ...
- 459
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5
answers
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views
Is there any safe way to send money from a cold wallet, using an untrusted computer?
You have 2 computers. One is 100% offline and, thus, trusted. Other is online. Private keys are stored on the offline computer and the online computer has no access to it. Is there any way to sign a ...
- 3,177
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votes
3
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How to validate a private key?
I could not find any library that, given an hex value, returns true if the given string is a valid ether private key.
Any hints?
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3
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Is it possible to overflow uints?
The Ethereum token tutorial has a check for a uint256 overflow.
function transfer(address _to, uint256 _value) {
/* Check if sender has balance and for overflows */
if (balanceOf[msg.sender] ...
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19
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3
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send VS call - differences and when to use and when not to use
Can somebody please explain the differences between using a send and call for contracts and when to use and not use these different methods?
For example :
msg.sender.send(number);
msg.sender....
- 921
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2
answers
5k
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How to access external knowledge / data in a smart contract
let’s say a contract wants to execute on knowledge contained outside the blockchain (e.g. whats the price of gold, what was the avg windspeed in NYC, how many people moved to portland in the last ...
- 293
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1
answer
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What happens if transaction runs out of gas before transaction completes?
As gas cost can only be estimated until the transaction is executed against the actual contract state at the time of execution on the blockchain, what happens if transaction runs out of gas before the ...
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Inheritance and Function Overwriting: Who can call the parent function?
I want to know who is still able to call an original overwritten function in case of inheritance.
Let's assume I have the following setup:
contract A{
address public owner;
function A(){
...
- 499
18
votes
5
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3k
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How will regular users be able to use dApps without buying ether?
Requiring users to get ether before they can use a dApp, is too much of a barrier for any kind of mainstream adoption. If dApps offer free ether in a naive way, they can be attacked by Sybils where a ...
eth♦
- 85.1k
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votes
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What are effective and secure ways of shuffling a deck of cards in a contract?
We want to write a card game in Ethereum. What are effective and secure ways of shuffling a deck of cards in a contract, and dealing them to players? It needs to be done in a way so that no one can ...
eth♦
- 85.1k
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During a 51% attack, What Can the Attacker Actually Accomplish?
During an attack on the network, where the attacker has more than 51% of hashing power (or the equivalent of Ether in PoS), what can the attacker do and not do to the chain and the contracts on it?
...
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Explain "griefing" attack on Aave flash loan
Aave doc about flash loan warns to never store funds inside a receiver contract as it can be exposed to "griefing" attack.
So my questions are
Can you give an example of this attack?
How ...
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1
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970
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Why were empty accounts allowed to be on the blockchain?
It's hard to see what the benefits of allowing empty accounts to be on the blockchain are. This was a known subtlety (see "note: there is a difference between zero-balance and nonexistent") and ...
eth♦
- 85.1k
15
votes
2
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8k
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Is it possible to call the constructor function of an existing contract?
In theory, a constructor is just a function like any other function, but only gets called once at construction time. Because the EVM doesn't know the notion of a constructor, in theory, a constructor ...
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15
votes
3
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Why does Ethereum have gas?
Why does Ethereum have gas? What other approaches could Ethereum have used to work around the Halting Problem?
eth♦
- 85.1k
15
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1
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What are the risks associated with using Ethereum?
Knowing the risks associated with a system, their probability and their severity is the first step towards good risk management. There is little details and analysis that has been published about the ...
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Does Ethereum Suffer From Transaction Malleability?
Does Ethereum in its current form (Homestead, specifically Geth v1.3.6) have transaction malleability issues similar to Bitcoin? If so, is there a standard method for deriving a normalized hash for ...
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What exactly is a proxy contract and why is there a security vulnerability involved in it?
I was looking at the recent FE badger DAO exploit and this Twitter thread in it https://twitter.com/CryptoCatVC/status/1466380960648380419?s=20
One piece of advice the author gives before signing a ...
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How to steal eth using delegatecall and selfdestruct
This documentation says
Even if a contract’s code does not contain a call to selfdestruct, it can still perform that operation using delegatecall or callcode.
This worries me.
I've created ...
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1
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Why isn't fast sync the default?
As I understand, fast sync has all the security guarantees of a full sync, but is faster. Is that correct? If so, why isn't fast sync the default?
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Is a fully private blockchain network immutable?
I always hear that immutability is one of the great assets of using blockchains in banks. An auditor can come and look at the list of transactions and it will trust them because blockchains are ...
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What Hierarchical Deterministic (HD) wallets are available for Ethereum?
A Hierarchical Deterministic (HD) wallet has some nice features such as easier backup (instead of needing to backup multiple keystore files and the passwords for each of them).
Are there any ...
14
votes
1
answer
2k
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What does `call.value` mean and how did it allow the attack to The DAO?
I'm trying to get some sense from the hysteria around the attack performed to The DAO smart contract.
I understand the high level explanations, but I'd like to grasp how this attack was performed.
I'...
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If someone gets my geth keystore files, can they spend my ETH without knowing my password(s)?
I always assumed so, since geth requires a new password for every account, but just want to be sure.
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Solidity functions - private visibility
Is the following function parameter (string name) only visible to the owner contract itself?
function myFunction(string name) private returns (bool)
{
return true;
}
So nobody can read / see ...
- 921