Thu 7 Dec 2023 12:00 - 12:15 at Golden Gate C1 - Testing IV Chair(s): Jonathan Bell

Blockchain is a distributed ledger that records transactions among users on top of a peer-to-peer network. While various blockchain platforms exist, Ethereum is the most popular general-purpose platform and its support of smart contracts led to a new form of applications called decentralized applications (DApps). A typical DApp has an off-chain frontend and on-chain backend architecture, and the frontend often needs interactions with the backend network, e.g., to acquire chain data or make transactions. Therefore, Ethereum nodes implement the official RPC specification and expose a uniform set of RPC methods to the frontend. However, the specification is not sufficient in two points: (1) lack of clarification for non-deterministic event handling, and (2) lack of specification for invalid-as-themselves arguments. To effectively disclose any deviations caused by the insufficiency, this paper introduces EtherDiffer that automatically performs differential testing on four major node implementations in terms of their RPC services. EtherDiffer first generates a non-deterministic chain by multi-concurrent transactions and propagation delay. Then, it applies our key techniques called property-based generation and type-preserving mutation to generate both semantically-valid and semantically-invalid-yet-executable test cases. EtherDiffer executes the test cases on target nodes and reports any deviations in error handling or return values. The evaluation showed the effectiveness of our test case generation techniques with the success ratios of 98.8% and 95.4%, respectively. Also, EtherDiffer detected 48 different classes of deviations including 11 implementation bugs such as crash and denial-of-service bugs. We reported 44 of the detected classes to the specification and node developers and received acknowledgements as well as bug patches. Lastly, it significantly outperformed the official node testing tool in every technical aspect. We believe that our research findings can contribute to more stable DApp ecosystem by reducing the inconsistencies among nodes.

Thu 7 Dec

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11:00 - 12:30
Testing IVResearch Papers / Industry Papers at Golden Gate C1
Chair(s): Jonathan Bell Northeastern University
11:00
15m
Talk
Code Coverage Criteria for Asynchronous Programs
Research Papers
Mohammad Ganji Simon Fraser University, Saba Alimadadi Simon Fraser University, Frank Tip Northeastern University
Media Attached
11:15
15m
Talk
Automated Test Generation for Medical Rules Web Services: A Case Study at the Cancer Registry of Norway
Industry Papers
Christoph Laaber Simula Research Laboratory, Tao Yue Beihang University, Shaukat Ali Simula Research Laboratory and Oslo Metropolitan University, Thomas Schwitalla Cancer Registry of Norway, Jan F. Nygård Cancer Registry of Norway
DOI Pre-print Media Attached
11:30
15m
Talk
Test Case Generation for Drivability Requirements of an Automotive Cruise Controller: An Experience with an Industrial Simulator
Industry Papers
Federico Formica McMaster University, Nicholas Petrunti McMaster University, Lucas Bruck McMaster University, Vera Pantelic McMaster University, Mark Lawford McMaster University, Claudio Menghi University of Bergamo; McMaster University
DOI Media Attached
11:45
15m
Talk
Prioritizing Natural Language Test Cases Based on Highly-Used Game Features
Industry Papers
Markos Viggiato University of Alberta, Dale Paas Prodigy Education, Cor-Paul Bezemer University of Alberta
DOI Media Attached
12:00
15m
Talk
EtherDiffer: Differential Testing on RPC Services of Ethereum Nodes
Research Papers
Shinhae Kim The Affiliated Institute of ETRI, Sungjae Hwang Sungkyunkwan University
Media Attached
12:15
15m
Talk
[Remote] API-Knowledge Aware Search-based Software Testing: Where, What and How
Research Papers
Xiaoxue Ren Zhejiang University, Xinyuan Ye Australian National University, Yun Lin Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Zhenchang Xing Data61, Shuqing Li The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Michael Lyu The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Media Attached