ParSE: Efficient Detection of Smart Contract Vulnerabilities via Parallel and Simplified Symbolic Execution

Abstract

Symbolic execution is a frequently used method for vulnerability detection in smart contracts. However, existing tools face limitations with the constraint solving and may cause the "path explosion" problem. This costs too much time and may lead to False-Negative (FN) of detection results. In this work, we propose ParSE, a novel approach that leverages Parallel and Simplified symbolic Execution to improve both detection efficiency and the number of True-Positive (TP). We inject ParSE into two widely used symbolic execution tools, Oyente and Mythril, for detecting vulnerabilities in smart contracts. Experimental results show that ParSE accelerates to 9.33x and 5.30x for Oyente and Mythril, respectively. Moreover, tools based on ParSE improve the detection number of TP.