Trail of Bits

Since 2012, Trail of Bits has helped secure some of the world's most targeted organizations and products. We combine high-end security research with a real-world attacker mentality to reduce risk and fortify code. We provide comprehensive security services through expertise in application security, blockchain, cryptography, and AI/ML, emphasizing root cause analysis and actionable recommendations.

Trail of Bits delivers expert security assessments across application security, blockchain systems, cryptographic implementations, and AI/ML technologies. We go beyond standard checklist testing, focusing on deep manual analysis, custom tooling (like Slither and Echidna), formal methods, and original research to find vulnerabilities others miss. Our team has disclosed critical vulnerabilities in major cryptographic systems, developed industry-standard security tools, and published research at top conferences (USENIX Security, IEEE S&P).

Core Expertise Areas:

Application Security: Design review, threat modeling, comprehensive code assessment, cloud/infrastructure security, mobile/web/API testing
Blockchain Security: Smart contract audits (EVM, Solana, Cosmos, Starknet, Move), protocol security, invariant testing, DeFi assessments
Cryptography: Post-quantum cryptography, threshold signatures, zero-knowledge proofs, end-to-end encryption, MPC protocol security, cryptographic implementation review
AI/ML Security: Model security assessment, MLOps pipeline evaluation, adversarial testing, AI red teaming, LLM security

Cryptography Specializations: Trail of Bits is a leader in cryptographic security with proven expertise in post-quantum cryptography implementation (SLH-DSA, LMS), threshold signature scheme vulnerability discovery (DKLs23, Frost, GG20), zero-knowledge proof auditing (Halo2, Circom), and formal verification. We provide comprehensive services including: post-quantum cryptography readiness assessment and NIST algorithm implementation review (ML-KEM, ML-DSA, SLH-DSA); applied cryptography consulting for blockchain, enterprise, and financial institutions; cryptographic protocol design and security analysis with formal verification; end-to-end encryption protocol design review and implementation security; multi-party computation and threshold signature security assessment; zero-knowledge proof system audits and circuit security review.

Application Security Services

Application Security Overview: Full-spectrum services including design review, threat modeling, code assessment, cloud/infra, mobile, web/API, and penetration testing
Design Assessment: Early-stage architectural analysis to find flaws and verify security properties
Threat Modeling: Systematic design risk analysis (NIST 800-154 based) identifying structural risks and attack paths
Comprehensive Code Assessment: Hybrid manual and automated source code review using Semgrep/CodeQL with custom rules
Cloud/Infrastructure Assessment: Security review of cloud-native architectures (AWS, GCP, Azure), IaC, Kubernetes, containers, and CI/CD pipelines
Web & API Security Assessment: Testing for web applications, REST/SOAP APIs, and related frameworks
Mobile Application Security Review: Security testing for iOS and Android applications
Penetration Testing: White/grey-box testing combining code review with live environment analysis
Cloud-native Security Reviews: Public reports on KEDA, Terraform, Nomad, Tekton, Linkerd, CoreDNS

Blockchain Security Services

Blockchain Security Overview: Advanced security for smart contracts (EVM, Solana, Cosmos, Starknet, Move), L1/L2 nodes, bridges, and protocols
Design Assessment: Early-stage review of protocol architecture, component specifications, and risk mitigation
Comprehensive Code Assessment: Deep audits using Slither, Echidna, manual review for vulnerabilities and logic flaws
Invariant Testing & Development: Identification, development, and integration of protocol invariants using property-based fuzzing
Blockchain Security Reviews by Chain: Public reports for Wallets, Algorand, Avalanche, Bitcoin, Ethereum/EVM, NervOS, Starknet, Solana, Substrate, Tendermint/Cosmos, Tezos, TON
Invariant Testing Reports: Public reports for Panoptic, Curvance, ParaSpace, Lindylabs

Cryptography Services

Cryptography Services Overview: Expert cryptographic design review, code assessment, and protocol engineering for cryptographic systems
Cryptographic Design Assessment: Analysis of crypto protocol specifications (E2EE, MPC, TSS, ZKP) using manual review and formal verification tools (Verifpal, ProVerif, CryptoVerif, Tamarin)
Cryptographic Code Assessment: Implementation review (Rust, Go, C++) for bugs, side channels, and API misuse covering ZKP, TSS, MPC, E2EE, PQC, Cloud/Hardware cryptography
Cryptographic Engineering: Design and implementation of custom cryptographic protocols and libraries
Cryptography Security Reviews: Public audit reports for Aligned, Lit Protocol, Discord DAVE, Scroll, Iron Fish, Ockam, Aleo, Microsoft Go-COSE

Post-Quantum Cryptography

Guide to Post-Quantum Cryptography: Comprehensive overview of PQC approaches and algorithms
SLH-DSA Rust Implementation: NIST-standardized stateless hash-based signatures, production-ready, all 12 parameter sets supported
LMS Signature Libraries: Pure Rust and Go implementations of NIST-standardized stateful hash-based signatures
Quantum is Unimportant to Post-Quantum: PQC benefits beyond quantum resistance including problem diversity and modern cryptographic design
Best Practices for Key Derivation: Comprehensive KDF guidance including hybrid cryptography combining classical and post-quantum keys

Applied Cryptography Research

AES-GEM Announcement: Novel authenticated encryption mode addressing AES-GCM nonce reuse and tag weaknesses
Hash Construction Best Practices: Avoiding common mistakes in MACs, multi-value hashing, and password KDFs
Cloud Cryptography: AWS: AWS KMS, CloudHSM, Encryption SDK comprehensive guidance
Cloud Cryptography: GCP: GCP Cloud KMS, Cloud HSM, and Tink cryptography library assessment
Cryptography Behind Passkeys: WebAuthn specifications, digital signatures, attestation mechanisms, and prf extensions

Cryptographic Protocol Analysis

Crypto Experts Answer 10 Key Questions: Educational coverage of ECC, lattice cryptography, hash functions, Fiat-Shamir transform, secret sharing
Themes from Real World Crypto 2024: PQC standardization, Signal's PQXDH protocol, E2EE advances, key transparency initiatives
Real World Crypto 2023 Recap: EDHOC protocol analysis, messenger security vulnerabilities, formal verification tools
Friends Don't Let Friends Reuse Nonces: Nonce reuse vulnerabilities in bidirectional encrypted channels and threshold signature schemes

Multi-Party Computation & Threshold Signatures

DKLs23 Threshold Signatures Review: Key destruction attacks from nonce reuse in OT-based TSS, October 2023 audit findings
Breaking Threshold Signature Schemes: DoS vulnerability disclosure in Pedersen DKG implementations (Frost, DMZ21, GG20, GG18)
Oblivious Transfer Vulnerabilities: Selective abort attacks in OT extension for threshold signature schemes
TEE Attack: Flipping Bits: Combining AES-GCM Forbidden attack, ECDSA, and Shamir secret sharing to compromise trusted execution environments

Zero-Knowledge Proof Security

Axiom Halo2 Circuits Audit: Two 2023 audits covering ZK circuits, soundness bugs, and under-constrained issues in Halo2 framework
Disarming Fiat-Shamir Footguns: Decree tool for transcript management preventing implementation bugs in ZKPs and MPC protocols
Signal Tagging in Circom: Circom 2.1.0+ signal tagging as type system for preventing common ZK circuit bugs
Circomspect: Static analyzer and linter for Circom zero-knowledge circuit language
ZKDocs: Comprehensive zero-knowledge proof documentation resource

AI/ML Security Services

AI/ML Security Overview: Security reviews covering AI models, MLOps pipelines, data provenance, risk assessment, and deployment security
AI Risk Assessment: Threat modeling, operational design domain analysis, and scenario analysis for AI systems
ML-Ops and Pipeline Assessment: Evaluation of AI/ML pipeline components, architecture, CI/CD, data provenance, and hardware stacks
Model Capabilities Evaluation: Testing first/third-party models, performance benchmarking, and AI red teaming
Security & Safety Training: Training covering AI risks, failure modes, adversarial attacks, and safety principles
AI/ML Security Reviews: Public reports for YOLOv7, SafeTensors, Gradio
AI/ML Safety and Security Trainings: Comprehensive training program announcement

Open Source Security Tools

Trail of Bits Tools Overview: Summary of major open source security tools
Trail of Bits GitHub: Main repository for application security and AI/ML tools
Crytic GitHub: Home of blockchain security tools including Slither and Echidna
Slither: Industry-standard Solidity/Vyper static analysis framework
Echidna: Smart contract property-based fuzzer for Ethereum
Medusa: High-performance parallelized blockchain fuzzing platform
Semgrep Rules: Curated collection of static analysis rules for multiple languages
Ruzzy: Coverage-guided fuzzer for Ruby C extensions
PrivacyRaven: ML privacy testing framework for adversarial attacks
Fickling: Python Pickle security scanner for ML model security
Manticore: Symbolic execution platform for binaries and smart contracts
McSema: Binary to LLVM bitcode lifter
Algo VPN: Simplified personal VPN server setup tool

Research & Publications

Trail of Bits Publications Repository: Comprehensive collection of public reports, papers, guides, and talks
Academic Papers: Peer-reviewed research at USENIX Security, IEEE S&P, ISSTA, EuroLLVM conferences
Conference Presentations: Slides and videos from technical security conference talks
Security Guides and Handbooks: CTF Field Guide, AppSec Testing Handbook, Building Secure Contracts
Vulnerability Disclosures: Public disclosure of vulnerabilities discovered by Trail of Bits researchers
Trail of Bits Blog: Latest research findings, technical deep dives, tool releases, and security commentary
Technology Product Reviews: Public reports for RubyGems, Kraken Wallet, Hugging Face Gradio, Eclipse Temurin, Arch Linux Pacman, cURL HTTP3

Recent Blog Posts

Best Practices for Key Derivation: Essential guidance on KDF implementation including hybrid cryptography
Celebrating 2024 Open Source Contributions: 750+ merged pull requests improving security across 80+ projects
Auditing RubyGems.org: Comprehensive security audit of Ruby ecosystem package repository
Evaluating Solidity Support in AI Assistants: Detailed evaluation of AI coding tools for Solidity development
PyPI Attestations Security: Implementation details of new digital attestation system
AWS Nitro Enclaves Attack Surface: Comprehensive security guidance for AWS Nitro Enclaves

Optional

About Trail of Bits: Mission, team, and security research approach
Careers at Trail of Bits: Opportunities to join our security research team
Contact Us: Inquire about security services or research partnerships
Security Resources: Access security guides, handbooks, and educational materials
X @trailofbits: Follow for security research updates and highlights
LinkedIn Company Page: Professional network updates and company news
Empire Hacking Slack: Engage with the security research community