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1. Work-in-Progress: Enabling Secure Programming in C++ & Java through Practice Oriented Modules

   Kenneth Andrew Guernsey; Jacob Matthew; Quamar Niyaz; Xiaoli Yang; Ahmad Y Javaid; Sidike Paheding (August 2022, ASEE Annual Conference proceedings)

   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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2. Hands-on File Inclusion Vulnerablity and Proactive Control for Secure Software Development

   https://doi.org/10.1109/COMPSAC.2019.10274  

   Shahriar, Hossain; Talukder, Md Arabin; Rahman, Mohammad; Chi, Hongmei; Ahamed, Sheikh; Wu, Fan (July 2019, Proc. of 43rd IEEE Conference on Computer, Software and Applications (COMPSAC))

   Security vulnerabilities in an application open the ways to security dangers and attacks, which can easily jeopardize the system executing that application. Therefore, it is important to develop vulnerability-free applications. The best approach would be to counteract against potential vulnerabilities during the coding with secure programming practices. Software security proactive control education for secure portable and web application advancement is of enormous interests in the Information Technology (IT) fields. In this paper, we proposed and developed innovative learning modules for software security proactive control based on several real-world scenarios to broaden and promote proactive control for secure software development in computing education. 

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3. Fundamental Defensive Programming Practicec with Secure Coding Modules

   Yang, Jeong; Lodgher, Akhtar (January 2019, International Conference on Security and Management)

   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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4. Understanding security mistakes developers make: Qualitative analysis from Build It, Break It, Fix It

   Daniel Votipka, Kelsey R. (August 2020, USENIX Security Symposium)

   null (Ed.)

   Secure software development is a challenging task requiring consideration of many possible threats and mitigations.This paper investigates how and why programmers, despite a baseline of security experience, make security-relevant errors.To do this, we conducted an in-depth analysis of 94 submissions to a secure-programming contest designed to mimic real-world constraints: correctness, performance, and security.In addition to writing secure code, participants were asked to search for vulnerabilities in other teams’ programs; in total, teams submitted 866 exploits against the submissions we considered. Over an intensive six-month period, we used iterative open coding to manually, but systematically, characterize each submitted project and vulnerability (including vulnerabilities we identified ourselves). We labeled vulnerabilities by type, attacker control allowed, and ease of exploitation,and projects according to security implementation strategy.Several patterns emerged. For example, simple mistakes were least common: only 21% of projects introduced such an error.Conversely, vulnerabilities arising from a misunderstanding of security concepts were significantly more common, appearing in 78% of projects. Our results have implications for improving secure-programming APIs, API documentation,vulnerability-finding tools, and security education. 

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5. Understanding security mistakes developers make: Qualitative analysis from Build It, Break It, Fix It

   Daniel Votipka, Kelsey R. (January 2020, USENIX Security Symposium)

   Secure software development is a challenging task requiring consideration of many possible threats and mitigations. This paper investigates how and why programmers, despite a baseline of security experience, make security-relevant errors. To do this, we conducted an in-depth analysis of 94 submissions to a secure-programming contest designed to mimic real-world constraints: correctness, performance, and security. In addition to writing secure code, participants were asked to search for vulnerabilities in other teams’ programs; in total, teams submitted 866 exploits against the submissions we considered. Over an intensive six-month period, we used iterative open coding to manually, but systematically, characterize each submitted project and vulnerability (including vulnerabilities we identified ourselves). We labeled vulnerabilities by type, attacker control allowed, and ease of exploitation, and projects according to security implementation strategy. Several patterns emerged. For example, simple mistakes were least common: only 21% of projects introduced such an error. Conversely, vulnerabilities arising from a misunderstanding of security concepts were significantly more common, appearing in 78% of projects. Our results have implications for improving secure-programming APIs, API documentation, vulnerability-finding tools, and security education. 

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