Table of Contents
IntroductionUnderstanding Blockchain Infrastructure Components
A Broader Attack Surface
Practical Approach to Auditing Blockchain Infrastructure
Conclusion
When we talk about Web3 security, smart contract vulnerabilities tend to dominate the conversation. Reentrancy attacks, integer overflows, and flash loan exploits make headlines, often leading to multimillion-dollar losses. However, smart contracts are just one piece of the blockchain security puzzle. Behind every decentralized application lies a vast and complex infrastructure—validator nodes, consensus clients, data availability layers, execution clients and RPC endpoints—all of which play a crucial role in securing and maintaining blockchain networks.
Unlike smart contracts, which operate within the constraints of the Ethereum Virtual Machine or similar environments, blockchain infrastructure interacts directly with hardware, file systems, network layers, and cryptographic libraries. This fundamental difference brings new security risks. A single exploit in blockchain infrastructure can cripple an entire network, leading to downtime, loss of funds, or a chain fork, causing network instability and lack of consensus.
This blog post explores how auditing blockchain infrastructure differs from smart contract security assessments. We’ll cover:
Whether you're a smart contract auditor looking to expand into infrastructure security or a blockchain developer responsible for securing critical network components, this guide will help you understand the unique challenges of Blockchain infrastructure security—and why it’s just as important as protecting the smart contracts that run on top of it.
Let’s dive in.
Blockchain infrastructure consists of multiple interdependent components that collectively ensure network security, data integrity, and protocol efficiency. These components operate at different layers of the blockchain stack, and each has unique attack vectors that security auditors need to consider.
Given the vast security footprint of these infrastructural components, addressing the risks demands robust authentication, cryptographic proofs, redundancy mechanisms, and continuous monitoring to ensure blockchain networks remain resilient against both internal misconfigurations and external threats.
Auditing blockchain infrastructure differs fundamentally from smart contract auditing in attack surface, risk model, and security methodologies.
Smart contract security focuses on a self-contained, deterministic execution environment (e.g., the Ethereum Virtual Machine, WASM) with predetermined entry-points or call paths (such as public or external function), whereas infrastructure auditing involves networked, multi-component systems that operate across different layers and different geographies. This distributed complexity of infrastructure increases the attack surface exponentially.
While the security risks in smart contracts revolve around logical correctness, access control, and economic exploits, for infrastructure security concerns are broader and often more catastrophic if compromised or exploited. For instance, in Golang, maps are inherently unordered, which means that even if two systems contain identical map data, the order of the elements may differ. Consequently, any process that relies on the map's order will behave non-deterministically.
A blockchain infrastructure component's security heavily depends on how it fits within the overall architecture. To accurately assess its attack surface, it's essential to understand how the component interacts with other system elements and how the entire blockchain ecosystem functions as a whole. Security risks often emerge from integration points, making a system-wide perspective crucial for identifying vulnerabilities.
While blockchain infrastructure auditing differs significantly from smart contract auditing, there are still overlapping concerns, particularly in examining business logic, transaction processing, account state updates, rounding errors, and precision issues. Additionally, a common risk on both domains is supply chain attacks, where malicious dependencies or compromised third-party libraries in SDKs and node software can introduce backdoors, potentially compromising multiple nodes or even an entire blockchain network. This mirrors the risks in smart contract development, where integrating a compromised external dependency can lead to vulnerabilities in deployed contracts or dApp interactions.
RBAC (Role-Based Access Control) plays a crucial role in both blockchain infrastructure and smart contract security by ensuring that only authorized entities can perform sensitive operations. Similar to the use of RBAC in smart contracts, in infrastructure, RBAC controls validator permissions, RPC API access, and execution client state modifications to prevent unauthorized actions, thereby maintaining the integrity of operations. Both smart contract and infrastructure domains face privilege escalation risks, where a lack of proper access controls could allow attackers to take over contracts or manipulate node behavior.
These risks emphasize the importance of rigorous dependency audits, deterministic builds, and verification of third-party code to maintain infrastructure security. Both infrastructure and smart contract audits require a deep understanding of how values are computed, stored, and updated, ensuring that inconsistencies and unintended behaviors do not compromise the integrity of the blockchain ecosystem. Additionally, auditing the underlying infrastructure provides a deeper understanding of how smart contracts interact with the blockchain, leading to a more thorough and efficient smart contract audit.
As an auditor, conducting a line-by-line code review of a blockchain node is not feasible due to the sheer size of the codebase and the limited time available for review. Given these constraints, the best value for the client's investment lies in identifying attack patterns and security pitfalls rather than performing an exhaustive line-by-line analysis. This targeted approach ensures a more efficient and effective audit, focusing on the most critical risks.
For infrastructure projects that are built on top of existing frameworks like OP-Geth or EigenDA, differential audits are more cost-effective for clients than full-scale code reviews. In these cases, the best approach is to develop a strong understanding of the audited system while trusting that the underlying technology stack functions as intended.
Sometimes tool-based approaches like fuzzing and static analysis are key to boosting blockchain infrastructure audits. Fuzzing probes various system components with diverse inputs, catching bugs missed by manual checks. Static analysis scans code for vulnerabilities like integer overflows and outdated dependencies. These automated methods sharpen the auditor’s ability to pinpoint critical flaws efficiently.
One of the best ways to approach infrastructure audits is to think about the attack vectors that can affect each component of the system and try to break the code with a hacker’s mindset. Some key areas to focus on are:
By focusing on these key areas, auditors can maximize value for clients while ensuring critical security gaps are identified and mitigated within the infrastructure.
Blockchain security doesn’t stop at smart contracts—Blockchain infrastructure must be secured just as rigorously.
Infrastructure auditors need expertise in distributed systems, cryptography, and networking, requiring a shift in mindset from Solidity-focused security to protocol-level resilience.
As the blockchain space grows, demand for infrastructure security specialists is rising. If you're a web3 protocol, now is the perfect time to expand your security footprint by talking to OpenZeppelin’s Blockchain Infrastructure security experts. Here are some of the audits conducted previously for our Nodes and Infrastructure clients: