BugMagnifier: TON Transaction Simulator for Revealing Smart Contract Vulnerabilities

2025-09-29

AI Summary

TON’s asynchronous execution model renders message processing order non-deterministic, leading to timing-related security vulnerabilities—such as race conditions—that evade conventional static analysis. To address this, we propose the first dynamic detection framework tailored for TON, enabling precise orchestration of message sequences and comparative state evolution analysis within an integrated TON Sandbox and TVM environment. Our approach combines controlled message queue manipulation, differential state analysis, and probabilistic permutation testing. It automatically generates reproducible vulnerability evidence, shifting verification from expert-driven heuristics to systematic, repeatable validation. Experimental evaluation demonstrates its effectiveness in identifying message-ratio-dependent vulnerabilities; detection outcomes align closely with theoretical predictions, significantly enhancing the capability to uncover timing defects in TON smart contracts under asynchronous execution.

Technology Category

• Natural Language Processing: Safety and Robustness
• Data Mining & Knowledge Management: Anomaly/Outlier Detection
• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Plan Execution and Monitoring

Application Category

• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements
• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Efficient manipulation of static and dynamic Web-related graphs
• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Web performance, measurement, and characterization

Abstract

The Open Network (TON) blockchain employs an asynchronous execution model that introduces unique security challenges for smart contracts, particularly race conditions arising from unpredictable message processing order. While previous work established vulnerability patterns through static analysis of audit reports, dynamic detection of temporal dependencies through systematic testing remains an open problem. We present BugMagnifier, a transaction simulation framework that systematically reveals vulnerabilities in TON smart contracts through controlled message orchestration. Built atop TON Sandbox and integrated with the TON Virtual Machine (TVM), our tool combines precise message queue manipulation with differential state analysis and probabilistic permutation testing to detect asynchronous execution flaws. Experimental evaluation demonstrates BugMagnifier's effectiveness through extensive parametric studies on purpose-built vulnerable contracts, revealing message ratio-dependent detection complexity that aligns with theoretical predictions. This quantitative model enables predictive vulnerability assessment while shifting discovery from manual expert analysis to automated evidence generation. By providing reproducible test scenarios for temporal vulnerabilities, BugMagnifier addresses a critical gap in the TON security tooling, offering practical support for safer smart contract development in asynchronous blockchain environments.

Problem

• Detects smart contract vulnerabilities in asynchronous TON blockchain environments
• Reveals race conditions through controlled message orchestration and testing
• Automates discovery of temporal dependencies via differential state analysis

Innovation

• Simulates TON transactions to detect vulnerabilities
• Manipulates message queues for differential state analysis
• Uses probabilistic testing for asynchronous execution flaws