Decentralization has become the day-to-day code of this technological life. Any platform/technology that comes under blockchain technology is fully decentralized to achieve success.
Systematic deployment of decentralized applications (DApps) makes them vulnerable to hackers who can infiltrate the system at any time. As we know, DApps use open-source smart contracts, which can be a key to hackers making it very easy to find a weakness in the network.
Smart contract auditing is one of the best ways to prevent dApps security issues, and hackers like this, and eliminate vulnerabilities in smart contracts. Without any further ado, let’s jump to our topic security aspects of dApps.
What are dApps?
DApps are here to revolutionize how apps run, merging data privacy and proprietary benefits. Decentralized applications or dApps use blockchain to process data and perform transactions over a distributed network. Not like centralized apps, DApps are working and proceed by peer-to-peer networks.
DApps have front-end and back-end codes just like ordinary apps. It receives data from various sources which processes, calculates, and manipulates data based on front-end requests. A dApp has its back-end code in a decentralized technology like blockchain, where it receives and computes data such as smart contracts provided by the blockchain.
If the developer creates and releases the codebase for the DApp, then many apps can be built on top of it. There is not a single authority, so there is no single failure as the P2P network runs them.
DApp helps to create many applications like web applications, games, etc.
Benefits of dApp’s
The advent of dApps has overcome the vulnerabilities of traditional apps and incorporated many features. Some of the benefits of dApps are as follows.
Open-source nature: As everyone knows, DApps are very open to all. Their open-source smart contract code makes them easily accessible to anyone on the platform. Developers can deploy their existing smart contracts to dApps is also possible.
Automatic Operation: Automatically operating means that once a dapp is set in motion that is deployed on the blockchain, it runs independently without external tampering or third-party involvement.
Minimum Down Time: Blockchain is globally distributed and constantly powered by global computers and sources of computational power. It prevents downtime for a dapp more than an app located on a centralized network.
Censorship Free: The distributed nature of dApps dictates that no single entity controls and dominates a dApp. A dApp is developed by a developer and managed by the community of users over a distributed network called the blockchain.
Significant Characteristics of DApps
Here are some of the characteristics of dApps to highlight, they are:
Decentralized storage: Decentralization is the main goal of dApps, where data is stored in distributed blocks.
Open source code: The open-source code is accessible to all users for review. This means any changes or corrections needed are voted on and based on the result they implemented.
Cryptography benefits: They provide cryptographic algorithms. DApps use native tokens from the platform to reward users for participating or mining.
Security Challenges for DApps
Let us now explore some of the common technical security issues associated with dApps.
- Open source issues: On one side it’s a benefit of dApp another side this can also be a challenge. There is also a chance that the dApp code contains crypto key information. If the code accidentally contains private data or other access information, the dApp will be vulnerable to attack.
- Data issues: The framework is changing and dApps are associated with centralized data storage sites. It means that data breaches are still a possibility if your data is not properly secured.
- Human Intervention: No matter how advanced technology is, there are still humans who log into the online community. If a hacker can access the dApp, then the data breach possibility is really high.
- Entering wrong keys: The dApps operations are secured with key-value storage. A common mistake is that a developer writes to one key and reads it from another. So, care should be taken while writing the keys.
- Low liquidity level of dApps: Low liquidity levels on dApps make it difficult to buy or sell tokens at the expected price, causing the executed prices is lower than the expected prices.
- DApp Phishing: If any compromise in the coding of the DApp, the hackers attach the phishing links they are circulated on their official sites. When they are unknowingly clicked, they drain all funds from user wallets.
How to Stay Secure?
Overcoming security flaws solves a majority of problems related to DApps. Here are some ways to solve it.
The first thing you can do for DApp security is a proper smart contract audit; It will identify the vulnerabilities and eliminate them. A smart contract audit helps you find security flaws in your smart contract and blockchain code and provides suggestions on how to fix them.
Another effective step towards DApps security is penetration testing. It offers secure and comprehensive attack simulation to reveal the most sophisticated flaws in crypto exchanges, wallets, and DApps. Some of the benefits of penetration testing are finding hidden vulnerabilities, assessing node vulnerabilities, testing APIs, and discovering new attack paths.
Other important factors to consider are protecting wallets and private keys. Extreme care should be taken when handling this sensitive information. Using cryptography to verify a user’s identity is a great security measure as long as no one else gets the key.
Preventive measures for DApp security
- Always keep the secrecy of the private seed phrase to access the funds from the wallet to secure your wallet funds from third parties.
- Double-check and verify the authenticity and legitimacy of the DApp website before entering your details.
- Be wary of links or texts with grammatical errors, and check the grammatical and spelling mistakes while writing the code.
Wrapping Up,
It’s common for all technology to have its own pros and cons. To overcome such vulnerabilities we need to be aware of them before entering the firm. It’s no wonder that dApps have their own flaws, to overcome such issues there are also some preventive measures to take. Make sure that your dApp is safe & secure before deploying it on the blockchain.