<scp>CrossGuard</scp> : Runtime‐Adaptive <scp>LLM</scp> Fuzzing for Cross‐Contract Vulnerabilities Detection

ABSTRACT Smart contract transactions are increasingly interspersed with cross‐contract calls, creating intricate vulnerabilities that current tools frequently neglect. Cross‐contract vulnerabilities, stemming from interactions among many contracts, are notably difficult to identify, as existing methodologies are restricted to the analysis of only two contracts simultaneously. The growing number of transaction sequences and the larger area to search due to multiple contracts working together make it very hard to find these vulnerabilities. Traditional fuzzing methods are good at finding simple errors within a single contract, but they struggle to detect problems that come from complex interactions between multiple contracts, such as how they call each other and depend on each other's states. This work presents CrossGuard, a fuzz testing‐based approach aimed at effectively identifying cross‐contract vulnerabilities by addressing the shortcomings of conventional tools. Instead of using random transaction sequences like earlier fuzzers, CrossGuard uses smart fuzzing that learns from large language models (LLMs) to better explore important paths. We evaluate CrossGuard against top tools like CrossFuzz and xFuzz using 500 cross‐contracts that have vulnerabilities such as reentrancy, integer overflow, and block dependency. CrossGuard consistently achieves higher coverage and excels at detecting reentrancy and block dependency vulnerabilities. However, its performance on integer overflow detection is currently lower than that of CrossFuzz; this contrast underscores both the potential and the current limitations of LLM‐guided fuzzing. Natural language reasoning is highly effective for path‐sensitive, stateful vulnerabilities, but less precise for numeric edge cases where mutational fuzzing remains strong.

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Publication Details

Journal
Concurrency and Computation Practice and Experience
Published
2025-11-03
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1002/cpe.70421
Primary Topic
Information and Cyber Security
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
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article

CrossGuard : Runtime‐Adaptive LLM Fuzzing for Cross‐Contract Vulnerabilities Detection

Zhongru Wang, Chunlai Du, Hongsong Chen, Ghazi Mergani Ahmead Ali
Concurrency and Computation Practice and Experience
Information and Cyber Security
article

CrossGuard : Runtime‐Adaptive LLM Fuzzing for Cross‐Contract Vulnerabilities Detection

Zhongru Wang, Chunlai Du, Hongsong Chen, Ghazi Mergani Ahmead Ali
article en

Abstract

ABSTRACT Smart contract transactions are increasingly interspersed with cross‐contract calls, creating intricate vulnerabilities that current tools frequently neglect. Cross‐contract vulnerabilities, stemming from interactions among many contracts, are notably difficult to identify, as existing methodologies are restricted to the analysis of only two contracts simultaneously. The growing number of transaction sequences and the larger area to search due to multiple contracts working together make it very hard to find these vulnerabilities. Traditional fuzzing methods are good at finding simple errors within a single contract, but they struggle to detect problems that come from complex interactions between multiple contracts, such as how they call each other and depend on each other's states. This work presents CrossGuard, a fuzz testing‐based approach aimed at effectively identifying cross‐contract vulnerabilities by addressing the shortcomings of conventional tools. Instead of using random transaction sequences like earlier fuzzers, CrossGuard uses smart fuzzing that learns from large language models (LLMs) to better explore important paths. We evaluate CrossGuard against top tools like CrossFuzz and xFuzz using 500 cross‐contracts that have vulnerabilities such as reentrancy, integer overflow, and block dependency. CrossGuard consistently achieves higher coverage and excels at detecting reentrancy and block dependency vulnerabilities. However, its performance on integer overflow detection is currently lower than that of CrossFuzz; this contrast underscores both the potential and the current limitations of LLM‐guided fuzzing. Natural language reasoning is highly effective for path‐sensitive, stateful vulnerabilities, but less precise for numeric edge cases where mutational fuzzing remains strong.

Concurrency and Computation Practice and ExperienceVol. 37(27-28)
North China University of Technology (CN), China Academy of Space Technology (CN), Beijing Academy of Artificial Intelligence (CN), Ministry of Education (ME), Space Engineering University (CN), University of Science and Technology Beijing (CN)
Openalex Percentile: Top 54%
Information and Cyber Security
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