Due to its extensive application in the area of blockchain solidity, the programming language is experiencing widespread adoption. However, the language has certain underlying issues that smart contract developers must be aware of. In fact, many solidity developer professionals still do not comprehend critical solubility vulnerabilities and continue to utilize them for creating smart contracts. Hence they become a target for malicious attackers in the network.
So here, we will be looking into major issues in the solitary programming language. Further, by knowing these vulnerabilities beforehand, you will prevent yourself from creating loopholes for potential attackers. Hence, it will help you establish yourself as an expert smart contract developer.
Table of contents
- Understanding Solidity programming language
- Developers not checking external calls
- Re-Entrancy
- Problem of Re-Entrancy
- Default Visibilities
- Protecting the usage of constructor functions
- Tx.Origin Authentication
- Closing Thoughts
Understanding Solidity programming language
Solidity programming language is a high-standard and object-oriented language to perform smart contract implementation. At present, smart contracts are the main medium of monitoring the patterns of accounts in the Ethereum blockchain.
Basically, it is a curly-bracket programming language. You will see the influence of other popular languages in the structure of Solidity. For example, Python, C++, and JavaScript. Furthermore, it also works well with the Ethereum Virtual Machine.
Aside from this, Solidity can also back up libraries, inheritance, and other complicated user-based types. Moreover, as a smart contract developer, you will be able to build contracts for crowdfunding, multi-signature wallets, voting, and blind auctions. As per experts, while implementing contracts one should utilize the most recent Solidity version. This is because only its recent version can leverage security fixes.
Although the developers of the Solidity language consistently work to offer new features regularly, still there is a space for vulnerability. And, that is what we are going to explore further in the article. However, to have a deeper understanding of the entire subject we suggest you take blockchain certifications.
Developers not checking external calls
Unchecked external calls are the most common issue that we observe Solidity usage. Here for transferring Ether to external accounts, we use the transfer() function. Aside from this, the call function and send function is common in use for making an external call. And, among these two functions, the solidity developer team uses call () more frequently.
Further, the send and call functions tend to display a Boolean value that specifies the success/failure of the call. Therefore in this scenario, if any one of these two functions fails to perform the process, they will return with a false statement. Hence a smart contract developer needs to cross-check the reverted value to prevent any kind of pitfall.
Problem of Re-Entrancy
In the Ethereum mechanism, contracts need to submit external calls in order to call and leverage codes from other external contracts.
Further, the issue relates to the vulnerability of these external calls. In fact, the DAO hack is one example of a similar attack.
When the contract transfers Ether to an unknown address in the network, it comes under the sight of attackers. In such a scenario, attackers can build a smart contract with the inclusion of malicious code at an external address. Further, the malicious code stays in the fallback function and comes into play when the contract transfers Ether to that address. While taking up smart contract developer training, you will be able to learn more about this particular issue.
Default Visibilities
Solidity programming language uses visibility specifiers for its functions. Additionally, visibility is the driving force behind the calling of the functions. Furthermore, by default, the visibility of the function tends to be public. Hence it allows external users to perform the calling of the functions without needing any specific visibility. However, the problem takes place when the smart contract developer does not specify privacy on the visibility of certain functions. Hence you must opt for blockchain certifications and take practical projects regarding smart contracts development to understand this kind of vulnerability.
Protecting the usage of constructor functions
In general, constructor functions are special functions that a smart contract developer uses to perform privileged and important processes during contracts initialization. However, before the launch of solidity version 0.4.22, the names of constructors and contracts that are using them were the same.
But currently, the contract name changes at the time of development, but the constructor name stays as before. Thus, it can provide easy access to attackers into your smart contract.
In fact, it can bring multiple severe consequences due to differences in contract and constructor names. Furthermore, the attacker may call the Owner Wallet function and pose oneself as the owner. Hence there is a risk that the attackers can withdraw all the collected Ether that a smart contract has by using the withdraw function.
Tx.Origin Authentication
Basically, TX.origin is the global variable of Solidity programming language. More so, it comprises the account’s address that has been performing the original execution of the transaction or call. Furthermore, developers can not use this variable to perform authentication. This is because doing so can result in increasing the vulnerability of contracts for phishing attacks. Aside from this, the contracts that authorize users via TX.origin variable get exposure to multiple external attacks. Further, it causes users to carry out authentication activities over an erroneous contract. You can find a more detailed explanation of this scenario in a solidity developer course.
Closing Thoughts
So these are a few major issues in solidity programming languages that a solidity developer must know about. Although security and auditing tools are available to check vulnerabilities, the immutability of smart contracts makes them harder to perform. Therefore we need better and improved security analysis methods that we can use on smart contracts.
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