November 2023 – SE metrics (Software Engineering)

Libraries and security

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2309.11021.pdf

I often use python because of the large ecosystem of libraries. Thanks to these libraries, I do not have to focus on the details of the implementation, but I can focus on the task at hand. However, not all libraries are good, and therefore this paper captured my attention. The study aims to understand the characteristics and lifecycle of malicious code in PyPI by building an automated data collection framework and analyzing a dataset of malicious package files.

Key findings and contributions of the paper include:

Empirical Analysis: The authors conducted an empirical study to understand the characteristics and lifecycle of malicious code in the PyPI ecosystem.
Automated Data Collection: They built an automated data collection framework to gather a high-quality dataset of malicious code from PyPI mirrors and other sources.
Dataset Construction: The dataset includes 4,669 malicious package files, making it one of the largest publicly available datasets of PyPI malicious packages.
Classification Framework: An automated classification framework was developed to categorize the collected malicious code into different types based on their behavior characteristics.
Malicious Behavior: The research found that over 50% of the malicious code exhibits multiple malicious behaviors, with information stealing and command execution being particularly prevalent.
Novel Attack Vectors and Anti-Detection Techniques: The study observed several novel attack vectors and anti-detection techniques used by malicious code.
Impact on End-User Projects: It was revealed that 74.81% of all malicious packages successfully entered end-user projects through source code installation, increasing security risks.
Persistence in Mirror Servers: Many reported malicious packages persist in PyPI mirror servers globally, with over 72% remaining for an extended period after being discovered.
Lifecycle Portrait: The paper sketches a portrait of the malicious code lifecycle in the PyPI ecosystem, reflecting the characteristics of malicious code at different stages.
Suggested Mitigations: The authors present some suggested mitigations to improve the security of the Python open-source ecosystem.

The study is significant as it provides a systematic understanding of the propagation patterns, influencing factors, and potential hazards of malicious code in the PyPI ecosystem. It also offers a foundation for developing more efficient detection methods and improving the security practices within the software supply chain.

Understanding log files…

https://ginolzh.github.io/papers/ASE2023_Log_Message_Readability.pdf

Debugging and testing often require analyses of log files. This means that we need to read a lot of lines of information that can be useful, but at the same time it is difficult to parse it. Therefore, this paper is of interest for those who must read these files once in a while.

This paper investigates the readability of log messages in software logging. The authors conducted a comprehensive study involving interviews with industrial practitioners, manual investigation of log messages in open-source systems, online surveys, and the exploration of automatic classification of log message readability using machine learning.

Key findings and contributions of the paper include:

Practitioners’ Expectations (RQ1): Through interviews, the authors identified three aspects related to log message readability: Structure, Information, and Wording. They also derived specific practices to improve each aspect. Survey participants acknowledged the importance of these aspects, with Information being considered the most critical.
Readability in Open Source Systems (RQ2): A manual investigation of log messages from nine large-scale open-source systems revealed that 38.1% of log messages have inadequate readability, particularly in the aspect of Information.
Automatic Classification (RQ3): The study explored the use of deep learning and machine learning models to automatically classify the readability of log messages. The models achieved a balanced accuracy above 80% on average, indicating their effectiveness.

The paper’s contributions are significant as it is one of the first studies to investigate log message readability through interviews with industrial practitioners. It highlights the prevalence of inadequate readability in log messages within large-scale open-source systems and demonstrates the potential of machine learning models to classify log message readability automatically.

The study provides systematic comprehension of log message readability and offers empirically-derived guidelines to improve developers’ logging practices. It also opens avenues for future research to establish standards for composing log messages.

The authors conclude that their study sheds light on the importance of log message readability and provides a foundation for future work to improve logging practices in software development.

Robustness in language interpretation using LLMs

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2309.10644.pdf

I’ve used language models for a while now. They are capable of many tasks, but one of their main problem is the robustness of the results. The models can produce very different results if we change only a minor detail.

This paper addresses the challenge of interpretability in deep learning models used for source code classification tasks such as functionality classification, authorship attribution, and vulnerability detection. The authors propose a novel method called Robin, which aims to create robust interpreters for deep learning-based code classifiers.

Key points from the paper include:

Problem with Current Interpretability: The authors note that existing methods for interpreting deep learning models are not robust and struggle with out-of-distribution examples. This is a significant issue because practitioners need to trust the model’s predictions, especially in high-security scenarios.
Robin’s Approach: Robin introduces a hybrid structure that combines an interpreter with two approximators. This structure leverages adversarial training and data augmentation to improve the robustness and fidelity of interpretations.
Experimental Results: The paper reports that Robin achieves on average a 6.11% higher fidelity when evaluated on the classifier, 67.22% higher fidelity when evaluated on the approximator, and 15.87 times higher robustness compared to existing interpreters. Additionally, Robin is less affected by out-of-distribution examples.
Contributions: The paper’s contributions are threefold: addressing the out-of-distribution problem, improving interpretation robustness, and empirically evaluating Robin’s effectiveness compared to known post-hoc methods.
Motivating Instance: The authors provide a specific instance of code classification to illustrate the problem inherent to the local interpretation approach, demonstrating the need for a robust interpreter like Robin.
Design of Robin: The paper details the design of Robin, which includes generating perturbed examples, leveraging adversarial training, and using mixup to augment the training set.
Source Code Availability: The source code for Robin has been made publicly available, which can facilitate further research and application by other practitioners.
Paper Organization: The paper is structured to present a motivating instance, describe the design of Robin, present experiments and results, discuss limitations, review related work, and conclude the study.

The authors conclude that Robin is a significant step forward in producing interpretable and robust deep learning models for code classification, which is crucial for their adoption in real-world applications, particularly those requiring high security.

Differential prompting for test case generation

https://arxiv.org/pdf/2304.11686.pdf

Generating test cases is one of the new areas where ChatGPT is gaining traction. It is a good thing as it allows software developers to quickly raise quality of their software.

This paper discusses the problem and challenges in finding failure-inducing test cases, the potential of using LLMs for software engineering tasks, and the limitations of ChatGPT in this context. It also provides insights into how the task of finding a failure-inducing test case can be facilitated if the program’s intention is known, and how ChatGPT’s weakness at recognizing nuances can be leveraged to infer a program’s intention.

The authors propose Differential Prompting as a new paradigm for finding failure-inducing test cases, which involves program intention inference, program generation, and differential testing. The evaluation of this technique on QuixBugs and Codeforces demonstrates its effectiveness, notably outperforming state-of-the-art baselines.

The contributions of the paper include the original study of ChatGPT’s effectiveness in finding failure-inducing test cases, the proposal of the Differential Prompting technique, and the evaluation of this technique on standard benchmarks.

The paper also acknowledges that Differential Prompting works best for simple programs and discusses its potential benefits in software engineering education. Preliminaries and methodology are provided to illustrate the task of finding failure-inducing test cases and the workflow of Differential Prompting.

The authors conclude with the promising application scenarios of Differential Prompting, suggesting that while it is currently best for simple programs, it is a step towards finding failure-inducing test cases for larger software. They also highlight its benefits for software engineering education.