Content area

Abstract

Software assurance analysts deal with thousands of potential vulnerabilities many of which are false positives during the process of static code analysis. Manual review of all such potential vulnerabilities is tedious, time consuming, and frequently impractical. This dissertation presents a novel classification algorithm along with its variants that successfully label true and false vulnerabilities in software code. A selection process identifies the most important features utilized in the algorithm to detect and distinguish the true and false positive findings of the static code analysis results. This has been accomplished by an empirical and semantic method of identifying and using personal identifier as a critical feature for the classification. The approach has been validated by experimentation and comparison against thirteen existing classifiers. Extensive experiments were conducted using multiple production code and open source code with the aid of a variety of static code analysis tools. The results show significant improvements in Accuracy, Precision, and Recall, outperforming all participating classifiers, leading to significant improvements in the security posture of a software system.

Details

1010268
Title
Verifying Software Code Vulnerabilities Using Machine Learning and Classification Techniques
Number of pages
206
Degree date
2019
School code
0434
Source
DAI-B 80/11(E), Dissertation Abstracts International
ISBN
978-1-392-22610-0
Committee member
Chen, Zhiyuan; Fountzoulas, Constantine; Janeja, Vandana; Sampath, Sreedevi
University/institution
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Department
Information Systems
University location
United States -- Maryland
Degree
Ph.D.
Source type
Dissertation or Thesis
Language
English
Document type
Dissertation/Thesis
Dissertation/thesis number
13879023
ProQuest document ID
2239956731
Document URL
https://www.proquest.com/dissertations-theses/verifying-software-code-vulnerabilities-using/docview/2239956731/se-2?accountid=208611
Copyright
Database copyright ProQuest LLC; ProQuest does not claim copyright in the individual underlying works.
Database
ProQuest One Academic