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When vulnerabilities are discovered in software, which often happens after deployment, they must be addressed as part of ongoing software maintenance. A mature software development organization should analyze vulnerabilities in order to determine how they, and similar vulnerabilities, can be prevented in the future.In this paper we present a structured method for analyzing and documenting the causes of software vulnerabilities. Applied during software maintenance, the method generates the information needed for improving the software development process, to prevent similar vulnerabilities in future releases.Our approach is based on vulnerability cause graphs, a structured representation of causes of software vulnerabilities.

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Context. Passive testing is a technique in which traces collected from the execution of a system under test are examined for evidence of flaws in the system.Objective. In this paper we present a method for detecting the presence of security vulnerabilities by detecting evidence of their causes in execution traces. This is a new approach to security vulnerability detection.Method. Our method uses formal models of vulnerability causes, known as security goal models and vulnerability detection conditions (VDCs). The former are used to identify the causes of vulnerabilities and model their dependencies, and the latter to give a formal interpretation that is suitable for vulnerability detection using passive testing techniques. We have implemented modeling tools for security goal models and vulnerability detection conditions, as well as TestInv-Code, a tool that checks execution traces of compiled programs for evidence of VDCs.Results. We present the full definitions of security goal models and vulnerability detection conditions, as well as structured methods for creating both. We describe the design and implementation of TestInv-Code. Finally we show results obtained from running TestInv-Code to detect typical vulnerabilities in several open source projects. By testing versions with known vulnerabilities, we can quantify the effectiveness of the approach.Conclusion. Although the current implementation has some limitations, passive testing for vulnerability detection works well, and using models as the basis for testing ensures that users of the testing tool can easily extend it to handle new vulnerabilities.

Within the field of software security we have yet to find efficient ways on how to learn from past mistakes and integrate security as a natural part of software development. This situation can be improved by using an online repository, the SHIELDS SVRS, that facilitates fast and easy interchange of security artefacts between security experts, software developers and their assisting tools. Such security artefacts are embedded in or represented as security models containing the needed information to detect, remove and prevent vulnerabilities in software, independent of the applied development process. The purpose of this paper is to explain the main reference architecture description of the repository and the more general tool stereotypes that can communicate with it.