Professional Blockchain Application Penetration Testing Services
At Trilight Security, we provide comprehensive blockchain penetration testing services for organizations across the USA and the EU, including a strong focus on Germany. Our certified experts conduct adversarial assessments across the full blockchain attack surface — from Solidity and Vyper smart contracts and DeFi protocol logic to wallet infrastructure, node security, bridge implementations, and Web3 front-end interfaces. The majority of Web3 hacks do not come from smart contract bugs alone — they come from compromised admin keys, phished employees, and vulnerable supporting infrastructure, which is why our assessments cover the complete ecosystem, not just the on-chain code. Get in touch with Trilight Security to discover how our blockchain pentesting services can secure your protocol, protect user funds, and demonstrate the security assurance that investors, exchanges, and regulators require.
Smart Contract Security Review
We conduct in-depth security reviews of smart contract code across EVM-compatible chains (Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, BNB Chain, Avalanche) and non-EVM chains including Solana. Our review combines automated static analysis, dynamic testing, manual code review, and business logic assessment — covering the full SWC (Smart Contract Weakness Classification) registry and going beyond it to identify protocol-specific logic flaws that automated tools cannot detect.
DeFi Protocol & Business Logic Assessment
DeFi protocols introduce unique attack surfaces that go far beyond standard smart contract vulnerabilities. We assess the economic and logical security of your protocol — including flash loan attack vectors, price oracle manipulation, governance mechanism abuse, liquidity pool logic flaws, staking and reward calculation errors, and cross-protocol interaction risks — through manual adversarial analysis designed to think like an economically motivated attacker.
Our Offering
Black Box Pentesting
We provide black box blockchain penetration testing where we interact with your deployed contracts and infrastructure exclusively through public interfaces — replicating the perspective of an external attacker with no access to source code or internal documentation. This approach tests what is actually exposed on-chain and reflects the real threat profile of your deployed system.
Grey Box Pentesting
We conduct grey box assessments where we are provided with source code and technical documentation but without internal architecture details or privileged access. This approach allows us to combine the depth of code-level analysis with the adversarial perspective of an external attacker which is the most common and effective model for the project pre-launch security assessments.
White Box Pentesting
We conduct white box assessments where we have full access to source code, architecture docs, deployment scripts, access control configs, and test suites. This approach enables the deepest assessment of smart contract logic, protocol design, and supporting infrastructure — and is best for complex DeFi protocols, pre-mainnet launches, and compliance-driven engagements.
Why Blockchain Penetration Testing?
Blockchain and Web3 systems hold real financial value in code that, once deployed, cannot be patched in the traditional sense. CertiK’s year-end report tallied approximately $3.35 billion in losses across 630 security incidents in 2025, with a much higher average hit size of about $5.32 million per incident compared to the previous year. In just the first half of 2025, hacks and scams drained more than $2.3 billion — almost 66% more than the same period the previous year — with smart contract bugs and access control mistakes making up the majority of losses. Critically, approximately 20% of hacked protocols had been audited prior to the incident — demonstrating that a single audit pass is insufficient and that adversarial penetration testing, combining manual exploitation with automated tooling, is necessary to surface vulnerabilities that checklist-based audits miss. By engaging Trilight Security, you benefit from a team that approaches your protocol the way an attacker would — probing economic logic, chaining vulnerabilities, and demonstrating real exploitability with proof-of-concept evidence. This gives you the independent security assurance that exchanges, institutional investors, insurance underwriters, and regulators increasingly require before onboarding new protocols.
What We Test
Smart Contract Vulnerabilities
Our assessments provide systematic coverage of the full smart contract vulnerability landscape, aligned to the SWC (Smart Contract Weakness Classification) Registry and the DASP (Decentralized Application Security Project) Top 10:
- Reentrancy — single-function, cross-function, and cross-contract reentrancy; ERC-777 callback exploitation
- Access Control Failures — missing or misconfigured
onlyOwner/ role-based modifiers, unprotected initializers, tx.origin authentication - Integer Overflow / Underflow — arithmetic edge cases in token calculations, reward distributions, and fee mechanisms
- Price Oracle Manipulation — spot price manipulation, TWAP bypass, flash loan-assisted oracle attacks
- Flash Loan Attack Vectors — single-transaction economic exploitation of price-sensitive logic, collateral calculations, and reward mechanisms
- Logic & Arithmetic Errors — precision loss in fixed-point arithmetic, rounding errors in fee or reward calculations, incorrect state transitions
- Proxy & Upgrade Pattern Vulnerabilities — storage collisions in transparent and UUPS proxies, uninitialised implementation contracts, unprotected upgrade functions
- Denial of Service — gas limit attacks, unbounded loops, block stuffing, griefing vectors
- Front-Running & MEV Exposure — transaction ordering dependence, sandwich attack exposure, commit-reveal scheme weaknesses
- Governance Attacks — flash loan governance manipulation, vote delegation abuse, timelock bypass, quorum manipulation
- Signature & Replay Vulnerabilities — missing nonce checks, cross-chain replay, EIP-712 implementation errors
- Dependency & Third-Party Risk — vulnerable imported libraries, unsafe use of OpenZeppelin contracts, DeFi composability risks
Infrastructure & Web3 Attack Surface
- Admin key management and multisig configuration
- Front-end wallet integration and transaction signing security
- RPC node exposure and API security
- Deployment pipeline and upgrade key security
- Bridge and relayer trust model assessment
- Backend API and off-chain service security
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Penetration Testing Process
We use a combination of manual adversarial techniques and automated tooling to assess blockchain systems. Our methodology is adapted to the specific chain, contract architecture, and protocol design of each engagement. Typically, blockchain penetration testing projects include the following stages:
- Reconnaissance & Architecture Review: We analyse all in-scope components — smart contract source code, deployment configurations, protocol documentation, access control models, admin key management practices, oracle integrations, and external protocol dependencies. For black box engagements we conduct on-chain reconnaissance to map contract interactions, proxy patterns, and upgrade mechanisms before active testing begins.
- Static Analysis: We run automated static analysis across the full codebase using industry-standard tools to identify known vulnerability patterns — including reentrancy, integer overflow/underflow, unchecked return values, unprotected selfdestruct, tx.origin authentication, and incorrect access controls. All automated findings are triaged and manually validated before inclusion in the report — we never report automated output without human verification of exploitability.
- Dynamic Testing & Fuzzing: We deploy the contracts to a local fork of the target chain and conduct dynamic testing and property-based fuzzing — generating large volumes of adversarial inputs to identify edge cases, broken invariants, and state-dependent vulnerabilities that static analysis cannot surface. Foundry's native fuzzing engine and Echidna are used for property-based campaigns; mainnet forking allows testing against real protocol state and liquidity conditions.
- Manual Smart Contract Exploitation: Our experts conduct deep manual review and active exploitation attempts across the full smart contract codebase, targeting vulnerability classes that require human reasoning — including business logic flaws, economic attack vectors, flash loan exploitation paths, reentrancy across complex call chains, storage collision in proxy patterns, and governance manipulation. This phase cannot be replicated by any automated tool.
- DeFi & Economic Attack Simulation: For DeFi protocols, we simulate economically motivated attack scenarios — including flash loan attacks against price-sensitive logic, oracle manipulation via spot price or TWAP manipulation, sandwich attack exposure, liquidity drain via calculation errors in reward or fee mechanisms, and governance takeover via token accumulation paths. We model the economic incentive structure of your protocol and test whether an attacker with sufficient capital could profitably exploit it.
- Infrastructure & Off-Chain Testing: We assess the security of the supporting infrastructure surrounding the smart contracts — including node RPC endpoints, admin interfaces, wallet key management, front-end Web3 integration (wallet connection, transaction signing flows, signature replay exposure), backend APIs, and deployment pipeline security. A large proportion of real-world Web3 compromises occur at the infrastructure and operational layer rather than within the smart contracts themselves, making this phase critical to a complete security assessment.
- Bridge & Cross-Chain Security: Where in scope, we assess cross-chain bridge implementations for the vulnerability classes responsible for the largest historical losses — including signature verification bypass, replay attacks across chains, incorrect lock/mint accounting, relayer trust assumptions, and message validation flaws.
- Reporting: Our reports are thorough, developer-friendly, and written to be useful for both technical teams and non-technical stakeholders including investors and exchange listing teams. Each report includes: 1. A detailed attack narrative describing how each vulnerability could be exploited and what financial or operational impact an attacker could achieve, with proof-of-concept exploit code where applicable. 2. Specific, prioritised remediation recommendations for every identified vulnerability, with Solidity-level fix guidance, ordered by severity and exploitability. 3. Compliance mapping to the SWC Registry, DASP Top 10, and applicable regulatory frameworks.
Our Benefits
Top Certifications
Deep security expertise with blockchain and smart contract knowledge, backed by certifications like OSCE, OSCP, BCSP, CREST, CEH etc, alongside hands-on experience with DeFi protocols & Web3 infrastructure.
Top Methodologies
SWC Registry, DASP Top 10, OWASP Smart Contract Top 10, OWASP Web Security Testing Guide (WSTG) for Web3 front-end components, PTES (Penetration Testing Execution Standard), and NIST SP 800-115.
Rich Deliverables
We provide pentest reports with detailed findings, PoC exploit demonstrations, economic attack modelling, prioritised remediation recommendations with Solidity-level fix guidance, compliance mapping etc.
Cost Efficiency
One of our core advantages is access to top-tier cybersecurity and blockchain security talent with extensive experience in demanding enterprise and DeFi environments — delivered at transparent pricing.
Penetration Testing Methodologies
Our blockchain penetration testing services are grounded in the most current and comprehensive frameworks for smart contract and Web3 security assessment. Smart contract vulnerability coverage follows the SWC (Smart Contract Weakness Classification) Registry and the DASP Top 10 (Decentralized Application Security Project Top 10) as the primary vulnerability taxonomies. For DeFi-specific economic attack modelling, we apply adversarial economic reasoning informed by documented real-world exploits and published research on flash loan, oracle manipulation, and governance attack patterns.
The overall engagement structure follows PTES (Penetration Testing Execution Standard), and technical documentation for compliance-driven engagements is aligned to NIST SP 800-115. Web3 front-end and API assessments follow the OWASP Web Security Testing Guide (WSTG v4.2). For compliance engagements applicable to digital asset businesses, we align reporting to MiCA (Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation), DORA, GDPR, ISO/IEC 27001, and SOC 2 as required.
Tools
Our experts tailor their toolset based on the engagement type and target chain. For static analysis of Solidity and Vyper contracts, we use Slither (Trail of Bits) for fast pattern-based detection and Mythril for symbolic execution and deep vulnerability analysis. Dynamic testing and property-based fuzzing use Echidna (Trail of Bits) and Foundry’s native fuzzing engine (Forge), with Foundry’s mainnet forking capability enabling testing against real on-chain state and liquidity conditions. Formal verification of critical invariants uses Certora Prover where applicable. For non-EVM chains, we apply chain-specific analysis tooling appropriate to the target environment. Infrastructure and Web3 front-end testing draws on Burp Suite Professional, Nuclei, and our full web application pentesting toolset. All automated findings are manually reviewed and validated — no output is reported without human verification of exploitability and real-world impact.
Our Certifications
Deliverables
- Executive Summary: A high-level overview of the assessment results and overall risk exposure, written for management, investors, and non-technical stakeholders, including a clear statement of the most critical findings and their potential financial and operational impact.
- Test Plan: A document outlining the agreed scope, objectives, testing methodology, rules of engagement, and timeline for the engagement.
- Detailed Technical Report: A comprehensive report documenting all findings, including vulnerability descriptions aligned to the SWC Registry and DASP Top 10, severity ratings, step-by-step proof-of-concept exploit walkthroughs with Solidity-level reproduction code, and prioritised remediation guidance.
- Vulnerability Assessment: A full inventory of all vulnerabilities identified, including affected contracts and functions, severity ratings, and exploitability assessment.
- Economic Attack Analysis: A documented assessment of DeFi-specific economic attack vectors — including flash loan paths, oracle manipulation scenarios, and governance risks — with estimated financial impact modelling where applicable.
- Evidence: Transaction traces, exploit scripts, static analysis outputs, and other supporting artefacts for all findings.
- Compliance Mapping: A structured mapping of findings and remediation recommendations to applicable frameworks including the SWC Registry, DASP Top 10, MiCA, DORA, ISO/IEC 27001, and SOC 2 as required.
- Action Plan: A structured remediation roadmap with recommended actions, suggested timelines, and responsible parties for each identified issue.
After a follow-up retest to confirm that all identified vulnerabilities have been remediated, we issue a Pentest Certificate, which can be shared with exchanges, investors, insurance underwriters, and regulatory bodies as evidence of independent security assurance.
Penetration Test Report Sample
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FAQ
Blockchain penetration testing is a security assessment in which our experts simulate real-world attacks against your smart contracts, DeFi protocol logic, blockchain infrastructure, and Web3 applications — attempting to exploit vulnerabilities in the same way a financially motivated attacker would — to identify security weaknesses before they result in the loss of funds or user trust.
A smart contract audit is primarily a code review process — it checks your contract code against known vulnerability patterns and best practices. Blockchain penetration testing goes further: our experts actively attempt to exploit identified weaknesses, simulate economic attack scenarios such as flash loan and oracle manipulation attacks, test the supporting infrastructure and Web3 front-end, and demonstrate real-world impact with proof-of-concept exploits. An audit tells you what the code says; a penetration test tells you what an attacker can actually do with it.
We test smart contracts and protocols on EVM-compatible chains including Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, BNB Chain, and Avalanche, as well as non-EVM chains including Solana. We assess DeFi protocols, DEXs, lending platforms, yield aggregators, NFT marketplaces, DAO governance systems, token contracts, staking mechanisms, cross-chain bridges, and the Web3 infrastructure and front-end interfaces supporting them.
The most frequently exploited vulnerabilities in real-world incidents include reentrancy attacks, price oracle manipulation, flash loan-assisted logic exploitation, access control failures on privileged functions, integer arithmetic errors in token or reward calculations, unprotected proxy upgrade functions, governance manipulation, and signature replay vulnerabilities. Many of the largest losses in 2025 involved access control failures and oracle manipulation rather than novel or obscure bugs — demonstrating that well-known vulnerability classes continue to cause catastrophic losses when not properly assessed.
A flash loan allows an attacker to borrow an unlimited amount of funds within a single transaction at zero cost, provided the loan is repaid before the transaction ends. This gives an attacker temporary access to enormous capital they can use to manipulate prices, skew oracle readings, drain liquidity pools, or exploit calculation errors in a single atomic transaction. We test for flash loan vulnerabilities by forking the mainnet and simulating real-world flash loan attack scenarios against your protocol’s economic logic, identifying whether any function can be profitably exploited with flash-borrowed capital.
Yes, and we strongly recommend it. Testing before mainnet deployment is significantly more effective than post-launch assessment — vulnerabilities in proxy architecture, access control design, oracle integration, or tokenomics can be far more costly to remediate after deployment, and some cannot be fixed at all without a full redeployment. We support assessments at any stage from early development through to pre-launch testnet.
All active exploitation is conducted on a local or testnet fork of the target chain — we never execute transactions against your mainnet deployment without explicit agreement. This ensures zero impact on your live protocol, liquidity, or users while allowing us to test realistic attack scenarios against accurate contract state.
Our blockchain penetration testing follows the SWC Registry, DASP Top 10, and OWASP Smart Contract Top 10 as the primary vulnerability taxonomies. Web3 front-end and API testing follows the OWASP WSTG. For compliance-driven engagements, we align findings and documentation to MiCA, DORA, GDPR, ISO/IEC 27001, and SOC 2 as applicable.
The EU Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA), which came into full application in December 2024, imposes explicit operational resilience, ICT security, and risk management obligations on crypto-asset service providers (CASPs) and issuers operating in the EU. Under MiCA’s requirements — which align with DORA’s ICT security framework for regulated entities — penetration testing is a core mechanism for demonstrating that security controls are effective. Our assessments produce the documented evidence of methodology, findings, remediation, and retest confirmation that regulators and auditors require.
We cover Solidity and Vyper on all major EVM-compatible chains, Rust-based contracts on Solana, and can assess protocols on other chains on a case-by-case basis. For infrastructure and off-chain components, our assessment covers any language or stack used in the supporting services, APIs, and front-end interfaces.
Duration depends on the size and complexity of the codebase, the number of contracts and protocol interactions in scope, whether DeFi economic attack simulation is included, and the depth of infrastructure testing required. A typical engagement ranges from one to four weeks. We provide a detailed scoping estimate prior to any engagement.
For grey and white box engagements we require access to the smart contract source code repository, deployment addresses or scripts, protocol documentation, and a description of the intended protocol behaviour. For black box engagements we require only the deployed contract addresses and chain information. All information shared with us is handled in accordance with our ISO 27001-aligned security practices.
Yes. After a follow-up retest confirms that all identified vulnerabilities have been remediated, we issue a Pentest Certificate documenting the scope, methodology, findings, and remediation status of the engagement. This certificate can be shared with centralised and decentralised exchanges, institutional investors, insurance underwriters, and regulatory bodies as evidence of independent security assurance.
We recommend a full assessment before any mainnet deployment, after significant protocol upgrades or new contract deployments, before major liquidity events or token launches, and annually as part of an ongoing security programme. Smart contract vulnerability research evolves rapidly — new attack techniques and exploit patterns emerge regularly, and assessments that were current at launch may not reflect the current threat landscape six to twelve months later.
Yes. Our blockchain penetration tests can be scoped and documented to satisfy requirements under MiCA, DORA, GDPR, ISO/IEC 27001, SOC 2, and other applicable regulatory and contractual frameworks. We provide compliance-mapped reporting that aligns findings and remediation guidance directly to the relevant control requirements — producing the documented evidence chain that regulators, auditors, and institutional partners require.
Pricing depends on the size and complexity of the codebase, the number of contracts and protocol interactions in scope, whether economic attack simulation and infrastructure testing are included, and the depth of the assessment required. Given that the average loss per Web3 security incident exceeded $5 million in 2025, a professional blockchain penetration test represents a highly proportionate investment in risk reduction. Contact us for a detailed, obligation-free quote tailored to your protocol and requirements.
Our Recognition
