Mutation-based Evaluation of Cryptographic API Misuse Detectors

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Ami, Amit Seal, Marsden, Scott, Moran, Kevin, Poshyvanyk, Denys, Nadkarni, Adwait
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2021
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author Ami, Amit Seal
Marsden, Scott
Moran, Kevin
Poshyvanyk, Denys
Nadkarni, Adwait
author_facet Ami, Amit Seal
Marsden, Scott
Moran, Kevin
Poshyvanyk, Denys
Nadkarni, Adwait
contents The correct use of cryptography is central to ensuring data security in modern software systems. Hence, several academic and commercial static analysis tools have been developed for detecting and mitigating crypto-API misuse. While developers are optimistically adopting these crypto-API misuse detectors (or crypto-detectors) in their software development cycles, this momentum must be accompanied by a rigorous understanding of their effectiveness at finding crypto-API misuse in practice. This paper describes the MASC framework, which enables a systematic and data-driven evaluation of crypto-detectors using mutation testing. We ground MASC in a comprehensive view of the problem space by developing a data-driven taxonomy of existing crypto-API misuse, containing 107 misuse cases organized among nine semantic clusters. We develop 19 generalizable usage-based mutation operators and three mutation scopes that can expressively instantiate thousands of compilable variants of the misuse cases for thoroughly evaluating crypto-detectors. Using MASC, in a previous study, we evaluated nine major crypto-detectors and discovered 19 unique, undocumented flaws that severely impact the ability of crypto-detectors to discover misuses in practice. This paper substantially extends our MASC framework and offers updated evaluation of the crypto-detectors in our 2022 study, in addition to 5 more, major crypto-detectors. Through this work, we find 6 new, undocumented flaws, and demonstrate that these flaws affect the crypto-detectors regardless of their origin; open-source community, industry, and/or research. We conclude with a discussion on the diverse perspectives that influence the design of crypto-detectors and future directions towards building security-focused crypto-detectors by design.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2107_07065
institution arXiv
publishDate 2021
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Mutation-based Evaluation of Cryptographic API Misuse Detectors
Ami, Amit Seal
Marsden, Scott
Moran, Kevin
Poshyvanyk, Denys
Nadkarni, Adwait
Cryptography and Security
Software Engineering
The correct use of cryptography is central to ensuring data security in modern software systems. Hence, several academic and commercial static analysis tools have been developed for detecting and mitigating crypto-API misuse. While developers are optimistically adopting these crypto-API misuse detectors (or crypto-detectors) in their software development cycles, this momentum must be accompanied by a rigorous understanding of their effectiveness at finding crypto-API misuse in practice. This paper describes the MASC framework, which enables a systematic and data-driven evaluation of crypto-detectors using mutation testing. We ground MASC in a comprehensive view of the problem space by developing a data-driven taxonomy of existing crypto-API misuse, containing 107 misuse cases organized among nine semantic clusters. We develop 19 generalizable usage-based mutation operators and three mutation scopes that can expressively instantiate thousands of compilable variants of the misuse cases for thoroughly evaluating crypto-detectors. Using MASC, in a previous study, we evaluated nine major crypto-detectors and discovered 19 unique, undocumented flaws that severely impact the ability of crypto-detectors to discover misuses in practice. This paper substantially extends our MASC framework and offers updated evaluation of the crypto-detectors in our 2022 study, in addition to 5 more, major crypto-detectors. Through this work, we find 6 new, undocumented flaws, and demonstrate that these flaws affect the crypto-detectors regardless of their origin; open-source community, industry, and/or research. We conclude with a discussion on the diverse perspectives that influence the design of crypto-detectors and future directions towards building security-focused crypto-detectors by design.
title Mutation-based Evaluation of Cryptographic API Misuse Detectors
topic Cryptography and Security
Software Engineering
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.07065