Raven: Mining Defensive Patterns in Ethereum via Semantic Transaction Revert Invariants Categories

We frame Ethereum transactions reverted by an invariant–require() / assert() / if () revert statements in the contract implementation–as a positive signal of active on-chain defenses. Despite their value, the defensive patterns in these transactions remain undiscovered and underutilized in security research. We present Raven, a framework that aligns reverted transactions to the invariant causing the reversion in the smart contract source code, embeds these invariants using our BERT-based fine-tuned model, and clusters them by semantic intent to mine defensive invariant categories on Ethereum. Evaluated on a sample of 20,000 reverted transactions, Raven achieves cohesive and meaningful clusters of transaction-reverting invariants. Manual expert review of the mined 19 semantic clusters uncovers six new invariant categories absent from existing invariant catalogs, including feature toggles, replay prevention, proof/signature verification, counters, caller-provided slippage thresholds, and allow/ban/bot lists. To demonstrate the practical utility of this invariant catalog mining pipeline, we conduct a case study using one of the newly discovered invariant categories as a fuzzing oracle to detect vulnerabilities in a real-world attack. Raven thus can map Ethereum’s successful defenses. These invariant categories enable security researchers to develop analysis tools based on data-driven security oracles extracted from the smart contract’s working defenses.
Wed 20 MayDisplayed time zone: Seoul change
15:30 - 17:00 | Security, Fairness & Architectural AlignmentResearch Papers / Industry at Room 101 Chair(s): Amjed Tahir Massey University | ||
15:30 25mTalk | Do Language Models Prefer Vulnerable Code? A Probabilistic Study of Insecure Code Preference Research Papers Rui Melo Carnegie Mellon University and Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Sofia Reis Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto, Andre Catarino Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Rui Abreu University of Porto Pre-print | ||
15:55 25mTalk | Raven: Mining Defensive Patterns in Ethereum via Semantic Transaction Revert Invariants Categories Research Papers Mojtaba Eshghie Umeå University, Melissa Mazura KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Alexandre Bartel Umeå University | ||
16:20 25mTalk | Individual Fairness Testing in Fairness through Unawareness Research Papers | ||
16:45 15mTalk | Formalizing Test Levels for Architectural Alignment and Overall Optimization Industry | ||