Uncovering access control weaknesses and flaws with security-discordant software clones
François Gauthier, Thierry Lavoie, Ettore Merlo · 2013
Software clone detection techniques identify fragments of code that share some level of syntactic similarity. In this study, we investigate security-sensitive clone clusters: clusters of syntactically similar fragments of code that are protected by some privileges. From a security perspective, security-sensitive clone clusters can help reason about the implemented security model: given syntactically similar fragments of code, it is expected that they are protected by similar privileges. We hypothesize that clones that violate this assumption, defined as security-discordant clones, are likely to reveal weaknesses and flaws in access control models.