CoinWatch: Safeguarding Cryptocurrencies from Cloned Vulnerabilities

Cryptocurrencies have seen a surge in popularity, with thousands of new ones popping up every year. They improve on Bitcoin's core features, which include the blockchain data structure and consensus mechanism. However, these digital currencies are major targets for cyber-attacks due to their anonymity on exchanges and the public nature of their codebases. One significant issue is the prevalence of code clones in cryptocurrencies, which can spread security threats. If a vulnerability is found in one cryptocurrency, it could be present in others that have cloned its code.To tackle this, researchers proposed CoinWatch (CW), a system that analyzes code evolution and detects clones to indicate which cryptocurrencies might be vulnerable. They tested CW on 1094 cryptocurrencies using 4 known security vulnerabilities, and found 786 true vulnerabilities in 384 projects. These were confirmed by developers and reported as new security issues.