LENT-SSE: Leveraging Executed and Near Transactions for Speculative Symbolic Execution of Smart Contracts

Peilin Zheng, Bowei Su, Xiapu Luo, Ting Chen, Neng Zhang, Zibin Zheng

Research output: Chapter in book / Conference proceedingConference article published in proceeding or bookAcademic researchpeer-review

Abstract

Symbolic execution has proven effective for code analytics in smart contracts. However, for smart contracts, existing symbolic tools use multiple-transaction symbolic execution, which differs from traditional symbolic tools and also exacerbates the path explosion problem. In this paper, we first quantitatively analyze the bottleneck of symbolic execution in multiple transactions (TXs), finding the redundancy of the paths of TXs. Based on this finding, we propose LENT-SSE as a new speculation heuristic for Speculative Symbolic Execution of smart contracts, which leverages the executed and near TXs for skipping and recalling the SMT solving of paths. LENT-SSE uses an executed-transaction-based skipping algorithm to reduce the time required for SMT solving by leveraging the redundancy between executed and executing paths. Moreover, LENT-SSE uses a near-transaction-based recalling algorithm to reduce false skipping of the solving paths. Experimental results on the SmartBugs dataset show that LENT-SSE can reduce the total time by 37.4% and the solving time of paths by 65.2% on average without reducing the reported bugs. On the other dataset of 1000 realistic contracts, the total time and solving time are reduced by 38.1% and 54.7%.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationISSTA 2024 - Proceedings of the 33rd ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis
EditorsMaria Christakis, Michael Pradel
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery, Inc
Pages566-577
Number of pages12
ISBN (Electronic)9798400706127
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 11 Sept 2024
Event33rd ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis, ISSTA 2024 - Vienna, Austria
Duration: 16 Sept 202420 Sept 2024

Publication series

NameISSTA 2024 - Proceedings of the 33rd ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis

Conference

Conference33rd ACM SIGSOFT International Symposium on Software Testing and Analysis, ISSTA 2024
Country/TerritoryAustria
CityVienna
Period16/09/2420/09/24

Keywords

  • Blockchain
  • Smart Contract
  • Symbolic Execution

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Computational Theory and Mathematics
  • Computer Science Applications
  • Software

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