A Double-Edged Sword? Software Reuse and Potential Security Vulnerabilities
| Autor: | Diomidis Spinellis, Antonios Gkortzis, Daniel Feitosa |
|---|---|
| Přispěvatelé: | Governance and Innovation |
| Jazyk: | angličtina |
| Rok vydání: | 2019 |
| Předmět: |
Computer science
business.industry Code reuse Case study Software development 020207 software engineering 02 engineering and technology Attack surface Static analysis Reuse Computer security computer.software_genre Security vulnerabilities Software Silver bullet Software reuse 0202 electrical engineering electronic engineering information engineering 020201 artificial intelligence & image processing business computer Machine code |
| Zdroj: | Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Software and Systems Reuse (ICSR '19), 187-203 STARTPAGE=187;ENDPAGE=203;TITLE=Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Software and Systems Reuse (ICSR '19) Reuse in the Big Data Era-18th International Conference on Software and Systems Reuse, ICSR 2019, Cincinnati, OH, USA, June 26–28, 2019, Proceedings Lecture Notes in Computer Science ISBN: 9783030228873 ICSR Lecture Notes in Computer Science Lecture Notes in Computer Science-Reuse in the Big Data Era |
| ISSN: | 0302-9743 1611-3349 |
| Popis: | Reuse is a common and often-advocated software development practice. Significant efforts have been invested into facilitating it, leading to advancements such as software forges, package managers, and the widespread integration of open source components into proprietary software systems. Reused software can make a system more secure through its maturity and extended vetting, or increase its vulnerabilities through a larger attack surface or insecure coding practices. To shed more light on this issue, we investigate the relationship between software reuse and potential security vulnerabilities, as assessed through static analysis. We empirically investigated 301 open source projects in a holistic multiple-case methods study. In particular, we examined the distribution of potential vulnerabilities between the native code created by a project’s development team and external code reused through dependencies, as well as the correlation between the ratio of reuse and the density of vulnerabilities. The results suggest that the amount of potential vulnerabilities in both native and reused code increases with larger project sizes. We also found a weak-to-moderate correlation between a higher reuse ratio and a lower density of vulnerabilities. Based on these findings it appears that code reuse is neither a frightening werewolf introducing an excessive number of vulnerabilities nor a silver bullet for avoiding them. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
| Externí odkaz: |
|