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Abstract

Program code that has been identified as vulnerable to malicious attack, irrespective of the system application domain, should receive a high level of developer ‘fix’ attention. In this paper, we present an empirical study of potential faults (or p-faults) attributed to code vulnerability in ten Java Open-Source Systems (OSS). The study used a tool to extract six different categories of potential and common fault embracing: code vulnerability, (lack of) program correctness, bad practice, multi-threaded correctness, questionable practice and performance. Two research questions were then investigated. Firstly, what patterns existed in the types of code vulnerability p-faults found in the ten systems? Secondly, were those p-faults related in any sense to the other types of p-fault identified by the tool? Results showed a high percentage of classes with vulnerability p-faults to contain no other forms of fault. However, a strong association between p-faults in the ‘bad practice’ category and vulnerability p-faults was observed in the remaining classes, suggesting the two categories may have a level of inter-dependence.

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Counsell, S., Swift, S. (2008). An Empirical Study of Potential Vulnerability Faults in Java Open-Source Software. In: Iskander, M. (eds) Innovative Techniques in Instruction Technology, E-learning, E-assessment, and Education. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8739-4_91

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8739-4_91

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-8738-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4020-8739-4

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