Insecurity Through Obscurity: Veiled Vulnerabilities in Closed-Source Contracts

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2504.13398v1
• Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2025 01:22:58 GMT
• Title: Insecurity Through Obscurity: Veiled Vulnerabilities in Closed-Source Contracts
• Authors: Sen Yang, Kaihua Qin, Aviv Yaish, Fan Zhang,
• Abstract summary: We present SKANF, a novel bytecode analysis tool tailored for closed-source and obfuscated contracts.<n>SKANF combines control-flow deobfuscation, symbolic execution, and concolic execution based on historical transactions to identify and exploit asset management vulnerabilities.<n>Our evaluation on real-world Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) bots reveals that SKANF detects vulnerabilities in 1,028 contracts and successfully generates exploits for 373 of them, with potential losses exceeding $9.0M.
• Score: 8.824841117757655
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: Most blockchains cannot hide the binary code of programs (i.e., smart contracts) running on them. To conceal proprietary business logic and to potentially deter attacks, many smart contracts are closed-source and employ layers of obfuscation. However, we demonstrate that such obfuscation can obscure critical vulnerabilities rather than enhance security, a phenomenon we term insecurity through obscurity. To systematically analyze these risks on a large scale, we present SKANF, a novel EVM bytecode analysis tool tailored for closed-source and obfuscated contracts. SKANF combines control-flow deobfuscation, symbolic execution, and concolic execution based on historical transactions to identify and exploit asset management vulnerabilities. Our evaluation on real-world Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) bots reveals that SKANF detects vulnerabilities in 1,028 contracts and successfully generates exploits for 373 of them, with potential losses exceeding \$9.0M. Additionally, we uncover 40 real-world MEV bot attacks that collectively resulted in \$900K in losses.

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