Reasoning about Trace Vulnerabilities in Ethereum Smart Contracts for Software Engineers!

Please note: this is a technical deep dive session strictly for software engineers, software architects, DevOps, CTO’s, technical product managers and computer science/software engineering students only. We will therefore review all registrations and we will send you an email to confirm your seat. We require each attendee to register on Eventbrite to attend this event. Please complete the registration form provided. Security at the venue will not allow entry to anyone without a valid ticket. Registration will be required upon arrival. This is a private event and we have the right to refuse entry. As always, our developer deep dive event is popular and advised you to secure your ticket early. 
This event is organized by The Blockchain Connector, workonblockchain.com and VOLT Project.
TALK TITLE: Reasoning about Trace Vulnerabilities in Ethereum Smart Contracts
KEYWORDS: Ethereum, Smart Contracts, Program Analysis, Symbolic Execution
ABSTRACT:
Smart contracts — stateful executable objects hosted on blockchains like Ethereum — carry billions of dollars worth of coins and cannot be updated once deployed.
Im my talk, I will present a systematic characterisation of a new class of trace vulnerabilities, which result from analysing multiple invocations of a contract over its lifetime. We will discuss three example properties of such trace vulnerabilities: finding contracts that either lock funds indefinitely, leak them carelessly to arbitrary users, or can be killed by anyone. I will then describe the design and implementation of Maian, the first tool for precisely specifying and reasoning about trace properties, which employs inter-procedural symbolic analysis and concrete validator for exhibiting real exploits.
From nearly one million contracts in Ethereum blockchain, Maian flagged 34,200 (2,365 distinct) contracts as vulnerable, in 10 seconds per contract. On a subset of 3,759 contracts sampled for concrete validation and manual analysis, we reproduced real exploits at a true positive rate of 89%, yielding exploits for 3,686 contracts. Amongst others, Maian also found exploits for the infamous Parity bug that indirectly locked 200 million dollars worth in Ether.
This project is a joint work with Ivica Nikolić, Aashish Kolluri, Prateek Saxena, and Aquinas Hobor.
SPEAKER: Ilya Sergey
SHORT BIO:
Dr Ilya Sergey does research in the area of programming languages, program analysis, and formal verification. In recent years, Ilya has mainly been concerned with developing scalable methods for building trustworthy concurrent and distributed software, but his earlier work was advancing the state of the art in static analysis for higher-order languages and programming language design. Prior to joining academia, Ilya has spent a part of his career in industry, working in JetBrains Inc., a world-leading company in creating integrated developement  environments for software developers. He obtained his PhD in formal methods at KU Leuven (Belgium), and held a postdoctoral position at IMDEA Software Institute (Spain), before taking his current position as a Lecturer at University College London.
Location:
Room K6.29 (Anatomy Lecture Theatre), King's College London, Strand, London, WC2R 2LS   
Please enter from the main Strand entrance. You are required by security at reception to sign in and collect your visitors badge.
Date: 24th of May, 2018
Schedule:
18:30 – 19:00 Registration & Networking. Please arrive no earlier than 18:30. Registration is required at reception from the main Strand entrance.  
19:00 - 19:10 Intro from The Blockchain Connector, workonblockchain.com & VOLT Project.  
19:15 - 20:15 Main presentation by Ilya Sergey
20:15 - 21:00 Q&A session led by Mustafa Al-Bassam
21:00 Networking at a nearby pub.
Bio: Mustafa Al-Bassam is a PhD researcher at the Information Security Research Group of the Department of Computer Science at University College London, where his research interests include the intersections of peer-to-peer systems, distributed ledgers and information security. He is also an advisor to Cognosec, an information security services company.
EVENT ORGANIZER
Work on Blockchain, The Blockchain Connector and VOLT Project.
workonblockchain.com is a hiring platform for software engineers looking to work on blockchain. It’s the simplest way for software engineers to be hired by companies in the blockchain space. You simply create your own profile and wait for companies to apply to you. The platform is for blockchain engineers and for software engineers without the blockchain development experience who are passionate about entering this space for the first time. Platform coming soon. Software engineers and hiring companies can sign-up here for further updates: https://workonblockchain.com/
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The Blockchain Connector is a training company focusing entirely on blockchain technology. We have been running a monthly blockchain developer hands-on workshop since Jan 2017 in London. We are now in the process of planning a series of blockchain developer and also business focus workshop for non-technical users across Europe and beyond. Please inquire if you would like us to bring our workshop near you by emailing antonio@theblockchainconnector.com. Click HERE to join our next workshop. 
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https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-blockchain-connector/
Twitter:
@thebc_connector and @bc_workshop

Voting over Ledger Technology (The VOLT Project)
This project aims to explore applications of distributed ledger technologies (DLT) in domains involving voting and collective decision making. There are many domains in which some form of balloting is required, such as voting on proposals or electing in charities, professional organisations, clubs, trades unions, political parties, and private companies. It is important to run such ballots in a way that the result is accepted by all parties even where they do not trust each other.
More info available by visiting the following website http://www.volt-project.org/Follow on Twitter @VOLT_Project

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