Security Thinking in Online Freelance Software Development
A recent survey by Stack Overflow reports that, although a majority of software developers are in full-time employment, nearly 15% are independent contractors, freelancers, or self-employed. Online freelance software development (OFSD) is a significant part of the software industry and is a thriving online economy. Furthermore, security is an important quality requirement for the social sustainability of software. However, existing studies have shown differences in the way security issues are handled by developers working in organisational environments compared to those working in OFSD. This paper investigates the security culture of OFSD developers, and identifies significant themes in how security is conceived, practiced, and compensated. Based on in-depth interviews with 20 freelance developers, we report that (a) security thinking is evident in descriptions of their work, (b) there is a lack of common understanding of how security thinking is operationalised, and (c) the dynamics of the freelance development ecosystem influences payment considerations for secure development. Our findings help to understand the reasons why insecure software development is more pronounced in freelance development. These findings contribute towards developing security interventions that are tailored to the needs of freelance software developers – within the developer community at large.
Wed 17 MayDisplayed time zone: Hobart change
15:45 - 17:15 | SE for security 1Technical Track / SEET - Software Engineering Education and Training / Journal-First Papers / SEIS - Software Engineering in Society at Meeting Room 103 Chair(s): Abhik Roychoudhury National University of Singapore | ||
15:45 15mTalk | TAINTMINI: Detecting Flow of Sensitive Data in Mini-Programs with Static Taint Analysis Technical Track Chao Wang , Ronny Ko The Ohio State University, Yue Zhang The Ohio State University, Yuqing Yang The Ohio State University, Zhiqiang Lin The Ohio State University | ||
16:00 15mTalk | AChecker: Statically Detecting Smart Contract Access Control Vulnerabilities Technical Track Asem Ghaleb University of British Columbia, Julia Rubin University of British Columbia, Canada, Karthik Pattabiraman University of British Columbia | ||
16:15 15mTalk | Fine-grained Commit-level Vulnerability Type Prediction By CWE Tree Structure Technical Track Shengyi Pan Zhejiang University, Lingfeng Bao Zhejiang University, Xin Xia Huawei, David Lo Singapore Management University, Shanping Li Zhejiang University Pre-print | ||
16:30 15mPaper | Security Thinking in Online Freelance Software Development SEIS - Software Engineering in Society Irum Rauf The Open University, UK, Marian Petre School of Computing and Communications, The Open University, UK, Thein Tun School of Computing and Communications,The Open University, UK; Simply Business, UK, Tamara Lopez The Open University, Bashar Nuseibeh The Open University, UK; Lero, University of Limerick, Ireland | ||
16:45 7mTalk | Open Science in Software Engineering: A Study on Deep Learning-Based Vulnerability Detection Journal-First Papers Yu Nong Washington State University, Rainy Sharma Washington State University, Wahab Hamou-Lhadj Concordia University, Montreal, Canada, Xiapu Luo The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Haipeng Cai Washington State University Link to publication DOI Authorizer link Pre-print | ||
16:52 8mTalk | Training for Security: Planning the Use of a SAT in the Development Pipeline of Web Apps SEET - Software Engineering Education and Training Sabato Nocera University of Salerno, Simone Romano University of Salerno, Rita Francese University of Salerno, Giuseppe Scanniello University of Salerno | ||
17:00 15mTalk | VulGen: Realistic Vulnerability Generation Via Pattern Mining and Deep Learning Technical Track Yu Nong Washington State University, Yuzhe Ou University of Texas at Dallas, Michael Pradel University of Stuttgart, Feng Chen University of Texas at Dallas, Haipeng Cai Washington State University Pre-print | ||