Using semantic templates to study vulnerabilities recorded in large software repositories
Yan Wu, Robin A. Gandhi, Harvey Siy · 2010
Software repositories are rich sources of information about vulnerabilities that occur during a product's lifecycle. Although available, such information is scattered across numerous databases. Furthermore, in large software repositories, a single vulnerability may span across multiple components and have multidimensional interactions with other vulnerabilities. Thus, identifying the patterns of vulnerability occurrence in a larger context of software development continues to be an open problem. Here we present findings from our study of vulnerable software components using an ontology-guided analysis of vulnerabilities recorded in a software project's code repository. In this approach, a semantic template for each type of vulnerability is created from information in the Common Weakness Enumeration dictionary. Next, known vulnerabilities and related concepts in the repository are tagged with concepts from the template. Based on the characteristics of the resources affected by these vulnerabilities, other similar resources in the software can be identified for closer inspection and verification. We present results from our study of vulnerabilities in the Apache web server.