Theses and Dissertations

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Assessing vulnerabilities in software systems: a quantitative approach
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2007) Alhazmi, Omar, author; Malaiya, Yashwant K., advisor; Ray, Indrajit, advisor
Security and reliability are two of the most important attributes of complex software systems. It is now common to use quantitative methods for evaluating and managing reliability. Software assurance requires similar quantitative assessment of software security, however only limited work has been done on quantitative aspects of security. The analogy with software reliability can help developing similar measures for software security. However, there are significant differences that need to be identified and appropriately acknowledged. This work examines the feasibility of quantitatively characterizing major attributes of security using its analogy with reliability. In particular, we investigate whether it is possible to predict the number of vulnerabilities that can potentially be identified in a current or future release of a software system using analytical modeling techniques.