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Fine-Grained Network Analysis for Modern Software Ecosystems

Published: 10 December 2020 Publication History

Abstract

Modern software development is increasingly dependent on components, libraries, and frameworks coming from third-party vendors or open-source suppliers and made available through a number of platforms (or forges). This way of writing software puts an emphasis on reuse and on composition, commoditizing the services that modern applications require. On the other hand, bugs and vulnerabilities in a single library living in one such ecosystem can affect, directly or by transitivity, a huge number of other libraries and applications. Currently, only product-level information on library dependencies is used to contain this kind of danger, but this knowledge often reveals itself too imprecise to lead to effective (and possibly automated) handling policies. We will discuss how fine-grained function-level dependencies can greatly improve reliability and reduce the impact of vulnerabilities on the whole software ecosystem.

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Published In

cover image ACM Transactions on Internet Technology
ACM Transactions on Internet Technology  Volume 21, Issue 1
Visions Paper, Regular Papers, SI: Blockchain in E-Commerce, and SI: Human-Centered Security, Privacy, and Trust in the Internet of Things
February 2021
534 pages
ISSN:1533-5399
EISSN:1557-6051
DOI:10.1145/3441681
  • Editor:
  • Ling Liu
Issue’s Table of Contents
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 10 December 2020
Accepted: 01 August 2020
Revised: 01 July 2020
Received: 01 July 2020
Published in TOIT Volume 21, Issue 1

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Author Tags

  1. Software reuse
  2. network analysis
  3. security breaches

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  • Refereed

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  • FASTEN EU Project

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Cited By

View all
  • (2024)Bloat beneath Python’s Scales: A Fine-Grained Inter-Project Dependency AnalysisProceedings of the ACM on Software Engineering10.1145/36608211:FSE(2584-2607)Online publication date: 12-Jul-2024
  • (2024)Design of a Classroom Big Data Analysis System Based on Open Source Technology2024 13th International Conference on Educational and Information Technology (ICEIT)10.1109/ICEIT61397.2024.10540683(377-382)Online publication date: 22-Mar-2024
  • (2023)A Complex Adaptive Systems Perspective of Software Reuse in the Digital AgeInformation Systems Research10.1287/isre.2023.120034:4(1728-1743)Online publication date: 1-Dec-2023
  • (2023)Vulnerability of Package Dependency NetworksIEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering10.1109/TNSE.2023.3260880(1-13)Online publication date: 2023
  • (2023)Open Source License Detection in FASTEN2023 IEEE 30th Annual Software Technology Conference (STC)10.1109/STC58598.2023.00008(7-14)Online publication date: 25-Sep-2023
  • (2023)LCV-CM: a FASTEN Open Source License Compliance Verifier with Compatibility Matrix.2023 17th International Conference on Open Source Systems and Technologies (ICOSST)10.1109/ICOSST60641.2023.10414244(1-7)Online publication date: 20-Dec-2023
  • (2023)License compatibility for Python packages: the FASTEN PyPI plugin2023 17th International Conference on Open Source Systems and Technologies (ICOSST)10.1109/ICOSST60641.2023.10414206(1-6)Online publication date: 20-Dec-2023
  • (2023)Development of a method framework to predict network structure dynamics in digital platforms: Empirical experiments based on API networksKnowledge-Based Systems10.1016/j.knosys.2023.110936280(110936)Online publication date: Nov-2023
  • (2023)Frankenstein: fast and lightweight call graph generation for software buildsEmpirical Software Engineering10.1007/s10664-023-10388-729:1Online publication date: 16-Nov-2023
  • (2022)Analyzing the Direct and Transitive Impact of Vulnerabilities onto Different Artifact RepositoriesDigital Threats: Research and Practice10.1145/34728113:4(1-25)Online publication date: 7-Feb-2022
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