Cybersecurity and Privacy Aspects of Smart Contracts in the Energy Domain

Abstract

Smart contracts (SCs) are a set of logical procedures that can be run by individual peers participating within a Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) network. By design, smart contracts inherit many of the benefits of DLT, including its immutability, scalability and security properties. Nevertheless, they may introduce additional attack vectors, which can lead to cybersecurity explorations that could jeopardize the end-application’s ability to operate as intended or result in data leaks, and privacy violations. In this work an exploration of known problems, and possible attack scenarios will be presented. This is followed by a set of proposed best practices that are intended to assist developers, researchers and other relevant stakeholders to develop secure SC implementations.