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2022-03-22
O’Toole, Sean, Sewell, Cameron, Mehrpouyan, Hoda.  2021.  IoT Security and Safety Testing Toolkits for Water Distribution Systems. 2021 8th International Conference on Internet of Things: Systems, Management and Security (IOTSMS). :1—8.

Due to the critical importance of Industrial Control Systems (ICS) to the operations of cities and countries, research into the security of critical infrastructure has become increasingly relevant and necessary. As a component of both the research and application sides of smart city development, accurate and precise modeling, simulation, and verification are key parts of a robust design and development tools that provide critical assistance in the prevention, detection, and recovery from abnormal behavior in the sensors, controllers, and actuators which make up a modern ICS system. However, while these tools have potential, there is currently a need for helper-tools to assist with their setup and configuration, if they are to be utilized widely. Existing state-of-the-art tools are often technically complex and difficult to customize for any given IoT/ICS processes. This is a serious barrier to entry for most technicians, engineers, researchers, and smart city planners, while slowing down the critical aspects of safety and security verification. To remedy this issue, we take a case study of existing simulation toolkits within the field of water management and expand on existing tools and algorithms with simplistic automated retrieval functionality using a much more in-depth and usable customization interface to accelerate simulation scenario design and implementation, allowing for customization of the cyber-physical network infrastructure and cyber attack scenarios. We additionally provide a novel in-tool-assessment of network’s resilience according to graph theory path diversity. Further, we lay out a roadmap for future development and application of the proposed tool, including expansions on resiliency and potential vulnerability model checking, and discuss applications of our work to other fields relevant to the design and operation of smart cities.

2021-03-29
Grundy, J..  2020.  Human-centric Software Engineering for Next Generation Cloud- and Edge-based Smart Living Applications. 2020 20th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud and Internet Computing (CCGRID). :1—10.

Humans are a key part of software development, including customers, designers, coders, testers and end users. In this keynote talk I explain why incorporating human-centric issues into software engineering for next-generation applications is critical. I use several examples from our recent and current work on handling human-centric issues when engineering various `smart living' cloud- and edge-based software systems. This includes using human-centric, domain-specific visual models for non-technical experts to specify and generate data analysis applications; personality impact on aspects of software activities; incorporating end user emotions into software requirements engineering for smart homes; incorporating human usage patterns into emerging edge computing applications; visualising smart city-related data; reporting diverse software usability defects; and human-centric security and privacy requirements for smart living systems. I assess the usefulness of these approaches, highlight some outstanding research challenges, and briefly discuss our current work on new human-centric approaches to software engineering for smart living applications.

2021-03-15
Danilova, A., Naiakshina, A., Smith, M..  2020.  One Size Does Not Fit All: A Grounded Theory and Online Survey Study of Developer Preferences for Security Warning Types. 2020 IEEE/ACM 42nd International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE). :136–148.
A wide range of tools exist to assist developers in creating secure software. Many of these tools, such as static analysis engines or security checkers included in compilers, use warnings to communicate security issues to developers. The effectiveness of these tools relies on developers heeding these warnings, and there are many ways in which these warnings could be displayed. Johnson et al. [46] conducted qualitative research and found that warning presentation and integration are main issues. We built on Johnson et al.'s work and examined what developers want from security warnings, including what form they should take and how they should integrate into their workflow and work context. To this end, we conducted a Grounded Theory study with 14 professional software developers and 12 computer science students as well as a focus group with 7 academic researchers to gather qualitative insights. To back up the theory developed from the qualitative research, we ran a quantitative survey with 50 professional software developers. Our results show that there is significant heterogeneity amongst developers and that no one warning type is preferred over all others. The context in which the warnings are shown is also highly relevant, indicating that it is likely to be beneficial if IDEs and other development tools become more flexible in their warning interactions with developers. Based on our findings, we provide concrete recommendations for both future research as well as how IDEs and other security tools can improve their interaction with developers.
2021-02-08
Chesnokov, N. I., Korochentsev, D. A., Cherckesova, L. V., Safaryan, O. A., Chumakov, V. E., Pilipenko, I. A..  2020.  Software Development of Electronic Digital Signature Generation at Institution Electronic Document Circulation. 2020 IEEE East-West Design Test Symposium (EWDTS). :1–5.
the purpose of this paper is investigation of existing approaches to formation of electronic digital signatures, as well as the possibility of software developing for electronic signature generation at electronic document circulation of institution. The article considers and analyzes the existing algorithms for generating and processing electronic signatures. Authors propose the model for documented information exchanging in institution, including cryptographic module and secure key storage, blockchain storage of electronic signatures, central web-server and web-interface. Examples of the developed software are demonstrated, and recommendations are given for its implementation, integration and using in different institutions.
2021-02-01
Calhoun, C. S., Reinhart, J., Alarcon, G. A., Capiola, A..  2020.  Establishing Trust in Binary Analysis in Software Development and Applications. 2020 IEEE International Conference on Human-Machine Systems (ICHMS). :1–4.
The current exploratory study examined software programmer trust in binary analysis techniques used to evaluate and understand binary code components. Experienced software developers participated in knowledge elicitations to identify factors affecting trust in tools and methods used for understanding binary code behavior and minimizing potential security vulnerabilities. Developer perceptions of trust in those tools to assess implementation risk in binary components were captured across a variety of application contexts. The software developers reported source security and vulnerability reports provided the best insight and awareness of potential issues or shortcomings in binary code. Further, applications where the potential impact to systems and data loss is high require relying on more than one type of analysis to ensure the binary component is sound. The findings suggest binary analysis is viable for identifying issues and potential vulnerabilities as part of a comprehensive solution for understanding binary code behavior and security vulnerabilities, but relying simply on binary analysis tools and binary release metadata appears insufficient to ensure a secure solution.
2020-08-03
Huang, Xing-De, Fu, Chen-Zhao, Su, Lei, Zhao, Dan-Dan, Xiao, Rong, Lu, Qi-Yu, Si, Wen-Rong.  2019.  Research on a General Fast Analysis Algorithm Model for Pd Acoustic Detection System: The Software Development. 2019 11th International Conference on Measuring Technology and Mechatronics Automation (ICMTMA). :671–675.
At present, the AE method has the advantages of live measurement, online monitoring and easy fault location, so it is very suitable for insulation defect detection of power equipments such as GIS, etc. In this paper, development of a data processing software for PD acoustic detection based on a general fast analysis algorithm model is introduced. With considering the signal flow chart of current acoustic detection system widely used in operation and maintenance of power system equipments, the main function of the developed PD AE signals analysis software was designed, including the detailed analysis of individual data file, identification with phase compensation based on 2D PRPD histograms, batch processing analysis of data files, management of discharge fingerprint library and display of typical defect discharge data. And all of the corresponding developed software pages are displayed.
2020-02-10
Chechik, Marsha.  2019.  Uncertain Requirements, Assurance and Machine Learning. 2019 IEEE 27th International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE). :2–3.
From financial services platforms to social networks to vehicle control, software has come to mediate many activities of daily life. Governing bodies and standards organizations have responded to this trend by creating regulations and standards to address issues such as safety, security and privacy. In this environment, the compliance of software development to standards and regulations has emerged as a key requirement. Compliance claims and arguments are often captured in assurance cases, with linked evidence of compliance. Evidence can come from testcases, verification proofs, human judgement, or a combination of these. That is, we try to build (safety-critical) systems carefully according to well justified methods and articulate these justifications in an assurance case that is ultimately judged by a human. Yet software is deeply rooted in uncertainty making pragmatic assurance more inductive than deductive: most of complex open-world functionality is either not completely specifiable (due to uncertainty) or it is not cost-effective to do so, and deductive verification cannot happen without specification. Inductive assurance, achieved by sampling or testing, is easier but generalization from finite set of examples cannot be formally justified. And of course the recent popularity of constructing software via machine learning only worsens the problem - rather than being specified by predefined requirements, machine-learned components learn existing patterns from the available training data, and make predictions for unseen data when deployed. On the surface, this ability is extremely useful for hard-to specify concepts, e.g., the definition of a pedestrian in a pedestrian detection component of a vehicle. On the other, safety assessment and assurance of such components becomes very challenging. In this talk, I focus on two specific approaches to arguing about safety and security of software under uncertainty. The first one is a framework for managing uncertainty in assurance cases (for "conventional" and "machine-learned" systems) by systematically identifying, assessing and addressing it. The second is recent work on supporting development of requirements for machine-learned components in safety-critical domains.
Ashfaq, Qirat, Khan, Rimsha, Farooq, Sehrish.  2019.  A Comparative Analysis of Static Code Analysis Tools That Check Java Code Adherence to Java Coding Standards. 2019 2nd International Conference on Communication, Computing and Digital Systems (C-CODE). :98–103.

Java programming language is considered highly important due to its extensive use in the development of web, desktop as well as handheld devices applications. Implementing Java Coding standards on Java code has great importance as it creates consistency and as a result better development and maintenance. Finding bugs and standard's violations is important at an early stage of software development than at a later stage when the change becomes impossible or too expensive. In the paper, some tools and research work done on Coding Standard Analyzers is reviewed. These tools are categorized based on the type of rules they cheeked, namely: style, concurrency, exceptions, and quality, security, dependency and general methods of static code analysis. Finally, list of Java Coding Standards Enforcing Tools are analyzed against certain predefined parameters that are limited by the scope of research paper under study. This review will provide the basis for selecting a static code analysis tool that enforce International Java Coding Standards such as the Rule of Ten and the JPL Coding Standards. Such tools have great importance especially in the development of mission/safety critical system. This work can be very useful for developers in selecting a good tool for Java code analysis, according to their requirements.

2020-01-20
Wu, Yanjuan, Wang, Haoyue, Yang, Li.  2019.  Research on Modeling Method of Visualized Plane Topology in Electric Power System. 2019 Chinese Control Conference (CCC). :7263–7268.

Aiming at the realization of power system visualization plane topology modeling, a development method of Microsoft Foundation Classes application framework based on Microsoft Visual Studio is proposed. The overall platform development is mainly composed of five modules: the primitive library module, the platform interface module, the model array file module, the topology array file module, and the algorithm module. The software developed by this method can realize the user-defined power system modeling, and can realize power system operation analysis by combining with algorithm. The proposed method has a short development cycle, compatibility and expandability. This method is applied to the development of a plane topology modeling platform for the distribution network system, which further demonstrates the feasibility of this method.

2019-03-04
Zeinali, M., Hadavi, M. A..  2018.  Threat Extraction Method Based on UML Software Description. 2018 15th International ISC (Iranian Society of Cryptology) Conference on Information Security and Cryptology (ISCISC). :1–8.
Threat modeling is one of the best practices to secure software development. A primary challenge for using this practice is how to extract threats. Existing threat extraction methods to this purpose are mainly based on penetration tests or vulnerability databases. This imposes a non-automated timeconsuming process, which fully relies on the human knowledge and expertise. In this paper, a method is presented, which can extract the threats to a software system based on the existing description of the software behavior. We elaborately describe software behavior with sequence diagrams enriched by security relevant attributes. To enrich a sequence diagram, some attributes and their associated values are added to the diagram elements and the communication between them. We have also developed a threat knowledge base from reliable sources such as CWE and CAPEC lists. Every threat in the knowledge base is described according to its occurrence conditions in the software. To extract threats of a software system, the enriched sequence diagrams describing the software behavior are matched with the threat rules in our knowledge base using a simple inference process. Results in a set of potential threats for the software system. The proposed method is applied on a software application to extract its threats. Our case study indicates the effectiveness of the proposed method compared to other existing methods.
2019-02-14
Leemaster, J., Vai, M., Whelihan, D., Whitman, H., Khazan, R..  2018.  Functionality and Security Co-Design Environment for Embedded Systems. 2018 IEEE High Performance Extreme Computing Conference (HPEC). :1-5.

For decades, embedded systems, ranging from intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) sensors to electronic warfare and electronic signal intelligence systems, have been an integral part of U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) mission systems. These embedded systems are increasingly the targets of deliberate and sophisticated attacks. Developers thus need to focus equally on functionality and security in both hardware and software development. For critical missions, these systems must be entrusted to perform their intended functions, prevent attacks, and even operate with resilience under attacks. The processor in a critical system must thus provide not only a root of trust, but also a foundation to monitor mission functions, detect anomalies, and perform recovery. We have developed a Lincoln Asymmetric Multicore Processing (LAMP) architecture, which mitigates adversarial cyber effects with separation and cryptography and provides a foundation to build a resilient embedded system. We will describe a design environment that we have created to enable the co-design of functionality and security for mission assurance.

2018-06-07
Kang, E. Y., Mu, D., Huang, L., Lan, Q..  2017.  Verification and Validation of a Cyber-Physical System in the Automotive Domain. 2017 IEEE International Conference on Software Quality, Reliability and Security Companion (QRS-C). :326–333.
Software development for Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), e.g., autonomous vehicles, requires both functional and non-functional quality assurance to guarantee that the CPS operates safely and effectively. EAST-ADL is a domain specific architectural language dedicated to safety-critical automotive embedded system design. We have previously modified EAST-ADL to include energy constraints and transformed energy-aware real-time (ERT) behaviors modeled in EAST-ADL/Stateflow into UPPAAL models amenable to formal verification. Previous work is extended in this paper by including support for Simulink and an integration of Simulink/Stateflow (S/S) within the same too lchain. S/S models are transformed, based on the extended ERT constraints with probability parameters, into verifiable UPPAAL-SMC models and integrate the translation with formal statistical analysis techniques: Probabilistic extension of EAST-ADL constraints is defined as a semantics denotation. A set of mapping rules is proposed to facilitate the guarantee of translation. Formal analysis on both functional- and non-functional properties is performed using Simulink Design Verifier and UPPAAL-SMC. Our approach is demonstrated on the autonomous traffic sign recognition vehicle case study.
2018-05-02
Shanthi, D., Mohanty, R. K., Narsimha, G., Aruna, V..  2017.  Application of partical swarm intelligence technique to predict software reliability. 2017 International Conference on Intelligent Computing and Control Systems (ICICCS). :629–635.

Predict software program reliability turns into a completely huge trouble in these days. Ordinary many new software programs are introducing inside the marketplace and some of them dealing with failures as their usage/managing is very hard. and plenty of shrewd strategies are already used to are expecting software program reliability. In this paper we're giving a sensible knowledge and the difference among those techniques with my new method. As a result, the prediction fashions constructed on one dataset display a extensive decrease in their accuracy when they are used with new statistics. The aim of this assessment, SE issues which can be of sensible importance are software development/cost estimation, software program reliability prediction, and so forth, and also computing its broaden computational equipment with enhanced power, scalability, flexibility and that can engage more successfully with human beings.

2018-04-30
Kafali, Ö, Jones, J., Petruso, M., Williams, L., Singh, M. P..  2017.  How Good Is a Security Policy against Real Breaches? A HIPAA Case Study 2017 IEEE/ACM 39th International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE). :530–540.

Policy design is an important part of software development. As security breaches increase in variety, designing a security policy that addresses all potential breaches becomes a nontrivial task. A complete security policy would specify rules to prevent breaches. Systematically determining which, if any, policy clause has been violated by a reported breach is a means for identifying gaps in a policy. Our research goal is to help analysts measure the gaps between security policies and reported breaches by developing a systematic process based on semantic reasoning. We propose SEMAVER, a framework for determining coverage of breaches by policies via comparison of individual policy clauses and breach descriptions. We represent a security policy as a set of norms. Norms (commitments, authorizations, and prohibitions) describe expected behaviors of users, and formalize who is accountable to whom and for what. A breach corresponds to a norm violation. We develop a semantic similarity metric for pairwise comparison between the norm that represents a policy clause and the norm that has been violated by a reported breach. We use the US Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) as a case study. Our investigation of a subset of the breaches reported by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) reveals the gaps between HIPAA and reported breaches, leading to a coverage of 65%. Additionally, our classification of the 1,577 HHS breaches shows that 44% of the breaches are accidental misuses and 56% are malicious misuses. We find that HIPAA's gaps regarding accidental misuses are significantly larger than its gaps regarding malicious misuses.

2018-03-26
Voitovych, O., Kupershtein, L., Pavlenko, I..  2017.  Hidden Process Detection for Windows Operating Systems. 2017 4th International Scientific-Practical Conference Problems of Infocommunications. Science and Technology (PIC S T). :460–464.

Rootkits detecting in the Windows operating system is an important part of information security monitoring and audit system. Methods of hided process detection were analyzed. The software is developed which implements the four methods of hidden process detection in a user mode (PID based method, the descriptor based method, system call based method, opened windows based method) to use in the monitoring and audit systems.

2017-04-20
Alvarez, E. D., Correa, B. D., Arango, I. F..  2016.  An analysis of XSS, CSRF and SQL injection in colombian software and web site development. 2016 8th Euro American Conference on Telematics and Information Systems (EATIS). :1–5.

Software development and web applications have become fundamental in our lives. Millions of users access these applications to communicate, obtain information and perform transactions. However, these users are exposed to many risks; commonly due to the developer's lack of experience in security protocols. Although there are many researches about web security and hacking protection, there are plenty of vulnerable websites. This article focuses in analyzing 3 main hacking techniques: XSS, CSRF, and SQL Injection over a representative group of Colombian websites. Our goal is to obtain information about how Colombian companies and organizations give (or not) relevance to security; and how the final user could be affected.

2015-05-05
Lesk, M..  2014.  Staffing for Security: Don't Optimize. Security Privacy, IEEE. 12:71-73.

Security threats are irregular, sometimes very sophisticated, and difficult to measure in an economic sense. Much published data about them comes from either anecdotes or surveys and is often either not quantified or not quantified in a way that's comparable across organizations. It's hard even to separate the increase in actual danger from year to year from the increase in the perception of danger from year to year. Staffing to meet these threats is still more a matter of judgment than science, and in particular, optimizing staff allocation will likely leave your organization vulnerable at the worst times.