A Double-Edged Sword? Software Reuse and Potential Security Vulnerabilities

Antonios Gkortzis*, Daniel Feitosa, Diomidis Spinellis

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Conference proceedings/Edited volumeConference contributionScientificpeer-review

11 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

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.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationReuse in the Big Data Era - 18th International Conference on Software and Systems Reuse, ICSR 2019, Proceedings
EditorsXin Peng, Apostolos Ampatzoglou, Tanmay Bhowmik
PublisherSpringer
Pages187-203
Number of pages17
ISBN (Print)9783030228873
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jan 2019
Externally publishedYes
Event18th International Conference on Software and Systems Reuse, ICSR 2019 - Cincinnati, United States
Duration: 26 Jun 201928 Jun 2019

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume11602 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference18th International Conference on Software and Systems Reuse, ICSR 2019
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityCincinnati
Period26/06/1928/06/19

Keywords

  • Case study
  • Security vulnerabilities
  • Software reuse

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