Quiz: Security Auditing and Best Practices

Question 1: Why is security particularly critical in smart contract development?

A. They manage financial assets and are immutable once deployed. B. Smart contracts can be easily updated after deployment. C. Security flaws can be patched at any time. D. They operate in centralized environments.

Question 2: What does the term "shifting left" refer to in the context of smart contract security?

A. Delaying security audits until after deployment. B. Integrating security measures early in the development lifecycle. C. Focusing on user interface design before security. D. Prioritizing performance optimization over security.

Question 3: Which vulnerability involves exploiting recursive calls to withdraw funds multiple times before the contract updates balances?

A. Integer Overflow B. Oracle Manipulation C. Reentrancy Attack D. Front-Running

Question 4: What is an example of a historical smart contract exploit caused by a reentrancy attack?

A. The DAO Hack in 2016 B. The bZx Flash Loan Attack in 2020 C. The Parity Wallet Freeze in 2017 D. The Mt. Gox Hack in 2014

Question 5: Which pattern is recommended to prevent reentrancy attacks in Solidity?

A. Interactions-Effects-Checks B. Effects-Checks-Interactions C. Checks-Interactions-Effects D. Checks-Effects-Interactions

Question 6: What is an integer overflow in the context of smart contracts?

A. When a number exceeds its maximum storage capacity, wrapping around to zero. B. When a contract runs out of gas during execution. C. When a function is called recursively without a base case. D. When a contract fails to validate user input.

Question 7: How can developers mitigate the risk of integer overflows and underflows in Solidity?

A. By using unchecked arithmetic operations. B. By avoiding arithmetic operations altogether. C. By utilizing the SafeMath library or built-in overflow checks in Solidity 0.8.0 and above. D. By increasing the gas limit of transactions.

Question 8: What is front-running in the context of blockchain transactions?

A. Executing a transaction with insufficient gas. B. Submitting a transaction with a higher gas fee to be processed before pending transactions. C. Delaying a transaction until favorable conditions arise. D. Cancelling a transaction before it is mined.

Question 9: Which of the following is a best practice to prevent front-running attacks?

A. Using deterministic functions. B. Implementing commit-reveal schemes for sensitive transactions. C. Reducing the gas limit of transactions. D. Making all contract functions public.

Question 10: What is oracle manipulation in decentralized finance (DeFi)?

A. Tampering with external data feeds to influence contract behavior. B. Altering the bytecode of a deployed contract. C. Changing the state variables of a contract directly. D. Modifying the gas price of a transaction.

Question 11: How can developers mitigate the risk of oracle manipulation?

A. By using a single, trusted oracle source. B. By aggregating data from multiple independent oracles. C. By avoiding the use of oracles altogether. D. By increasing the gas limit for oracle queries.

Question 12: What is the purpose of access control in smart contracts?

A. To allow any user to execute any function. B. To restrict function execution to authorized addresses. C. To increase the gas cost of transactions. D. To make the contract immutable.

Question 13: Which Solidity feature is commonly used to enforce access control?

A. unchecked blocks B. public visibility C. modifier onlyOwnerblocks D. delegatecall

Question 14: Which of the following is a common smart contract auditing tool?

A. Truffle B. Remix C. MythX D. Ganache

Question 15: What is the benefit of using a bug bounty program for smart contract security?

A. It helps developers delay security testing. B. It incentivizes ethical hackers to find vulnerabilities before attackers do. C. It reduces gas costs. D. It prevents blockchain forks.

Question 16: Which of the following best describes the principle of least privilege in smart contract security?

A. Only necessary permissions should be granted to users and contracts. B. All functions should be publicly accessible. C. Contracts should automatically execute all transactions. D. Users should have full control over contract state variables.

Question 17: What is the function of a circuit breaker pattern in smart contract security?

A. To speed up contract execution. B. To ensure the contract never runs out of gas. C. To prevent external function calls. D. To disable critical contract functions in case of a detected exploit.