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ICSE 2023
Sun 14 - Sat 20 May 2023 Melbourne, Australia
Fri 19 May 2023 16:37 - 16:45 at Meeting Room 105 - Vulnerability testing and patching Chair(s): Cristian Cadar

Software updates reduce the opportunity of exploitation. However, since updates can also introduce breaking changes, enterprises face the problem of balancing the need to secure software with updates with the need to support operations. We propose a methodology to quantitatively investigate the effectiveness of software updates strategies against attacks of Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs). We consider strategies where the vendor updates are the only limiting factors to cases in which enterprises delay updates from 1 to 7 months based on SANS data. Our manually curated dataset of APT attacks covers 86 APTs and 350 campaigns from 2008 to 2020. It includes information about attack vectors, exploited vulnerabilities (e.g. 0 days vs public vulnerabilities), and affected software and versions. Contrary to common belief, most APT campaigns employed publicly known vulnerabilities. If an enterprise could theoretically update as soon as an update is released, it would face lower odds of being compromised than those waiting one (4.9x) or three (9.1x) months. However, if attacked, it could still be compromised from 14% to 33% of the times. As in practice enterprises must do regression testing before applying an update, our major finding is that one could perform 12% of all possible updates restricting oneself only to versions fixing publicly known vulnerabilities without significant changes to the odds of being compromised compared to a company that updates for all versions.

Fri 19 May

Displayed time zone: Hobart change

15:45 - 17:15
Vulnerability testing and patchingTechnical Track / Journal-First Papers / DEMO - Demonstrations at Meeting Room 105
Chair(s): Cristian Cadar Imperial College London, UK
15:45
15m
Talk
Silent Vulnerable Dependency Alert Prediction with Vulnerability Key Aspect Explanation
Technical Track
Jiamou Sun CSIRO's Data61, Zhenchang Xing , Qinghua Lu CSIRO’s Data61, Xiwei (Sherry) Xu CSIRO’s Data61, Liming Zhu CSIRO’s Data61, Thong Hoang Data61, CSIRO, Dehai Zhao Australian National University, Australia
16:00
15m
Talk
Compatible Remediation on Vulnerabilities from Third-Party Libraries for Java ProjectsDistinguished Paper Award
Technical Track
Lyuye Zhang Nanyang Technological University, Chengwei Liu Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Zhengzi Xu Nanyang Technological University, Sen Chen Tianjin University, Lingling Fan Nankai University, Lida Zhao Nanyang Technological University, Wu Jiahui Nanyang Technological University, Yang Liu Nanyang Technological University
16:15
15m
Talk
Automated Black-box Testing of Mass Assignment Vulnerabilities in RESTful APIs
Technical Track
Davide Corradini University of Verona, Michele Pasqua University of Verona, Mariano Ceccato University of Verona
Pre-print
16:30
7m
Talk
Patchmatch: A Tool for Locating Patches of Open Source Project Vulnerabilities
DEMO - Demonstrations
Kedi Shen Zhejiang university city college, Yun Zhang Zhejiang University City College, Lingfeng Bao Zhejiang University, Zhiyuan Wan Zhejiang University, Zhuorong Li Zhejiang university city college, Minghui Wu Zhejiang University City College}
16:37
8m
Talk
Software Updates Strategies: a Quantitative Evaluation against Advanced Persistent Threats
Journal-First Papers
Giorgio Di Tizio University of Trento, Michele Armellini University of Trento, Fabio Massacci University of Trento; Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
16:45
7m
Talk
SSPCatcher: Learning to Catch Security Patches
Journal-First Papers
Arthur D. Sawadogo Université du Québec à Montréal, Tegawendé F. Bissyandé SnT, University of Luxembourg, Naouel Moha École de Technologie Supérieure (ETS), Kevin Allix CentraleSupelec Rennes, Jacques Klein University of Luxembourg, Li Li Beihang University, Yves Le Traon University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
16:52
15m
Talk
CoLeFunDa: Explainable Silent Vulnerability Fix Identification
Technical Track
Jiayuan Zhou Huawei, Michael Pacheco Centre for Software Excellence, Huawei, Jinfu Chen Centre for Software Excellence, Huawei, Canada, Xing Hu Zhejiang University, Xin Xia Huawei, David Lo Singapore Management University, Ahmed E. Hassan Queen’s University