TY - GEN

T1 - Developers deserve security warnings, too

T2 - 14th Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security, SOUPS 2018

AU - Gorski, Peter Leo

AU - Iacono, Luigi Lo

AU - Wermke, Dominik

AU - Stransky, Christian

AU - Moeller, Sebastian

AU - Acar, Yasemin

AU - Fahl, Sascha

N1 - Funding Information: The authors would like to thank Joe Calandrino and the anonymous reviewers for providing feedback; and all participants of this study for their voluntary participation. This work has been partially funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research within the funding program ”Forschung an Fachhochschulen”(contract no. 13FH016IX6).

PY - 2019

Y1 - 2019

N2 - Cryptographic API misuse is responsible for a large number of software vulnerabilities. In many cases developers are overburdened by the complex set of programming choices and their security implications. Past studies have identified significant challenges when using cryptographic APIs that lack a certain set of usability features (e. g. easy-to-use documentation or meaningful warning and error messages) leading to an especially high likelihood of writing functionally correct but insecure code. To support software developers in writing more secure code, this work investigates a novel approach aimed at these hard-to-use cryptographic APIs. In a controlled online experiment with 53 participants, we study the effectiveness of API-integrated security advice which informs about an API misuse and places secure programming hints as guidance close to the developer. This allows us to address insecure cryptographic choices including encryption algorithms, key sizes, modes of operation and hashing algorithms with helpful documentation in the guise of warnings. Whenever possible, the security advice proposes code changes to fix the responsible security issues. We find that our approach significantly improves code security. 73% of the participants who received the security advice fixed their insecure code. We evaluate the opportunities and challenges of adopting API-integrated security advice and illustrate the potential to reduce the negative implications of cryptographic API misuse and help developers write more secure code.

AB - Cryptographic API misuse is responsible for a large number of software vulnerabilities. In many cases developers are overburdened by the complex set of programming choices and their security implications. Past studies have identified significant challenges when using cryptographic APIs that lack a certain set of usability features (e. g. easy-to-use documentation or meaningful warning and error messages) leading to an especially high likelihood of writing functionally correct but insecure code. To support software developers in writing more secure code, this work investigates a novel approach aimed at these hard-to-use cryptographic APIs. In a controlled online experiment with 53 participants, we study the effectiveness of API-integrated security advice which informs about an API misuse and places secure programming hints as guidance close to the developer. This allows us to address insecure cryptographic choices including encryption algorithms, key sizes, modes of operation and hashing algorithms with helpful documentation in the guise of warnings. Whenever possible, the security advice proposes code changes to fix the responsible security issues. We find that our approach significantly improves code security. 73% of the participants who received the security advice fixed their insecure code. We evaluate the opportunities and challenges of adopting API-integrated security advice and illustrate the potential to reduce the negative implications of cryptographic API misuse and help developers write more secure code.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85075912193&partnerID=8YFLogxK

M3 - Conference contribution

AN - SCOPUS:85075912193

T3 - Proceedings of the 14th Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security, SOUPS 2018

SP - 265

EP - 280

BT - Proceedings of the 14th Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security, SOUPS 2018

Y2 - 12 August 2018 through 14 August 2018

ER -