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Practical Mutation Testing for Smart Contracts

• Joran J. Honig, Maarten H. Everts, Marieke Huisman. Practical Mutation Testing for Smart Contracts. In Data Privacy Management, Cryptocurrencies and Blockchain Technology - ESORICS 2019 International Workshops, DPM 2019 and CBT 2019, Luxembourg, September 26-27, 2019, Proceedings, pages 289--303, 2019.

  Main URL: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-31500-9_19
  Doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-31500-9_19

Abstract

Solidity smart contracts operate in a hostile environment, which introduces the need for the adequate application of testing techniques to ensure mitigation of the risk of a security incident. Mutation testing is one such technique. It allows for the evaluation of the efficiency of a test suite in detecting faults in a program, allowing developers to both assess and improve the quality of their test suites. In this paper, we propose a mutation testing framework and implement a prototype implementation called Vertigo that targets Solidity contracts for the Ethereum blockchain. We also show that mutation testing can be used to assess the test suites of real-world projects.