Nowadays, cyberattack incidents are happening on a daily basis. As a result, the demand for a larger and more challenging workforce is increasing. To handle this demand, academic institutions offer cybersecurity courses and degree programs into their curricula; however, more efforts are needed to address the high demand of the cybersecurity workforce. This work aims to bridge the gap between workforce shortage and the number of qualified graduates to fill the positions. We approach this by introducing cybersecurity concepts at the early stage of undergraduate curricula of computer science and engineering programs. Secure programming is critical as many cybersecurity incidents happen due to software vulnerabilities. However, most UG-level programming courses pay little attention to secure programming practices. As a result, many students graduate with limited knowledge of security vulnerabilities that might plague the developed software. Our goal in this work is to introduce secure programming at introductory level programming courses so that students should be aware of cybersecurity issues and use this security mindset in advanced level courses and projects in their degree programs. To accomplish this goal, we developed intuitive and interactive modules emphasizing secure programming in C++ and Java courses to help students become secure software developers. These modules will be used alongside the coursework to emphasize certain vulnerabilities within the programming environment of a specific language and allow students to learn cybersecurity topics, enforcing a solid foundation and understanding. We developed cybersecurity educational modules for C++ and Java as they are amongst the popular languages and used in introductory programming courses. While designing these modules, we kept in mind that the topics must be relevant to real-world issues in the software industry. We used a variety of resources and benchmarks to ensure the authenticity of our chosen topics, including Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) and Common Vulnerability and Exposures (CVE). While choosing module topics to develop, we had some restrictions. For example, the topics must be introductory and easy to understand. These modules are geared towards freshman or sophomore-level UG students who have just started programming. The developed security modules have four components: power-point slides, lab description, code template for the lab, and complete solution. The complete solution for each module will be provided to the instructors to check students’ work if they adopt the modules in their courses. The modules developed for a C++ programming course include labs on input validation, integer overflow, random number generation, function call with incorrect argument type, and dangling pointers. In Java, we developed lab modules for input validation, integer overflow, null object reference, random number generator, and data encapsulation.
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Fundamental Defensive Programming Practicec with Secure Coding Modules
While many vulnerabilities are often related to computing and network systems, there has been a growing number of vulnerabilities and attacks in software systems. They are generally caused by careless software design and implementations, and not putting sufficient effort into eliminating defects and flaws in the software itself. When it comes to building reliable and secure software, it is critical that security must be considered throughout the software development process. This paper presents a series of modules that are designed to introduce security concepts in beginners programming courses. The modules have been developed to teach the fundamental concepts of defensive programming from the freshman year, to ensure that the programming concepts are taught to beginning programmers from a security perspective. These modules are intended to build a strong cybersecurity foundation, which will then be enhanced further in the advanced courses, such as Secure Applications Programming and Secure Software Engineering courses. Both instructors and students can practice defensive programming with these modules in their classroom. The study plans to evaluate the teaching effectiveness of the modules associated with the Model-Eliciting Activity (MEA), an evidence-based teaching and learning methodology.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1832433
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10194540
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- International Conference on Security and Management
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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