USCSA: Evolution-Aware Security Analysis for Proxy-Based Upgradeable Smart Contracts

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Li, Xiaoqi, Xie, Lei, Li, Wenkai, Li, Zongwei
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Li, Xiaoqi
Xie, Lei
Li, Wenkai
Li, Zongwei
author_facet Li, Xiaoqi
Xie, Lei
Li, Wenkai
Li, Zongwei
contents In the case of upgrading smart contracts on blockchain systems, it is essential to consider the continuity of upgrades and subsequent maintenance. In practice, upgrade operations often introduce new vulnerabilities. Existing static analysis tools usually only scan a single version and are unable to capture the correlation between code changes and emerging risks. To address this, we propose an Upgradeable Smart Contract Security Analyzer, USCSA, which uses Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) difference analysis to assess risks associated with the upgrade process and utilizes large language models (LLMs) for assisted reasoning to achieve high-confidence vulnerability attribution. We collected and analyzed 3,546 cases of vulnerabilities in upgradeable contracts, covering common vulnerability categories such as reentrancy, access control flaws, and integer overflow. Experimental results show that USCSA achieves a precision of 92.26%, a recall of 89.67%, and an F1-score of 90.95% in detecting upgrade-induced vulnerabilities. As a result, USCSA provides a significant advantage to improve the security and integrity of upgradeable smart contracts, offering a novel and efficient solution for security auditing on blockchain applications.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_08372
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle USCSA: Evolution-Aware Security Analysis for Proxy-Based Upgradeable Smart Contracts
Li, Xiaoqi
Xie, Lei
Li, Wenkai
Li, Zongwei
Cryptography and Security
In the case of upgrading smart contracts on blockchain systems, it is essential to consider the continuity of upgrades and subsequent maintenance. In practice, upgrade operations often introduce new vulnerabilities. Existing static analysis tools usually only scan a single version and are unable to capture the correlation between code changes and emerging risks. To address this, we propose an Upgradeable Smart Contract Security Analyzer, USCSA, which uses Abstract Syntax Tree (AST) difference analysis to assess risks associated with the upgrade process and utilizes large language models (LLMs) for assisted reasoning to achieve high-confidence vulnerability attribution. We collected and analyzed 3,546 cases of vulnerabilities in upgradeable contracts, covering common vulnerability categories such as reentrancy, access control flaws, and integer overflow. Experimental results show that USCSA achieves a precision of 92.26%, a recall of 89.67%, and an F1-score of 90.95% in detecting upgrade-induced vulnerabilities. As a result, USCSA provides a significant advantage to improve the security and integrity of upgradeable smart contracts, offering a novel and efficient solution for security auditing on blockchain applications.
title USCSA: Evolution-Aware Security Analysis for Proxy-Based Upgradeable Smart Contracts
topic Cryptography and Security
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.08372