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Security Sensitive Data Flow Coverage Criterion for Automatic Security Testing of Web Applications

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Engineering Secure Software and Systems (ESSoS 2011)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNSC,volume 6542))

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Abstract

Common coverage criteria for software testing, such as branch coverage and statement coverage, are often used to evaluate the adequacy of test cases created by automatic security testing methods. However, these criteria were not originally defined for security testing. In this paper, we discuss the limitation of traditional criteria and present a study on a new criterion called security sensitive data flow coverage. This criterion aims to show how well test cases cover security sensitive data flows. We conducted an experiment of automatic security testing of real-world web applications to evaluate the effectiveness of our proposed coverage criterion, which is intended to guide test case generation. The experiment results show that security sensitive data flow coverage helps reduce test cost while keeping the effectiveness of vulnerability detection high.

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© 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Dao, T.B., Shibayama, E. (2011). Security Sensitive Data Flow Coverage Criterion for Automatic Security Testing of Web Applications. In: Erlingsson, Ú., Wieringa, R., Zannone, N. (eds) Engineering Secure Software and Systems. ESSoS 2011. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6542. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-19125-1_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-19125-1_8

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-19124-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-19125-1

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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