Analysis of software vulnerabilities through historical data Magnus Törnquist
[email protected] Department of Electrical and Information Technology Lund University Supervisor: Martin Hell Assistant Supervisor: Jonathan Sönnerup Examiner: Thomas Johansson June 29, 2017 c 2017 Printed in Sweden Tryckeriet i E-huset, Lund Popular science summary Lately there has been increasing media coverage of cyber crime, especially in re- lation to the elections in France and the United States. Every day information is being stolen from governments, businesses and private citizens. Information that can be sold, used for blackmail or for other nefarious purposes. Commonly this information is obtained through exploiting vulnerabilities in software. A vulnera- bility is essentially a bug in the code and they are very hard to avoid, especially in large complex programs. Having vulnerabilities in software is inevitable and software is everywhere: in every computer, router, webcam, mobile device and even in some coffeemakers. As long as these devices are connected an intruder has a wide variety of options on how to attack a network and the fast growth of Internet of Things (IoT) has lead to a huge amount of new devices on networks all over the world. This reality means that larger organizations have to spend a lot of time making sure all their software is updated and keeping track of potential breaches. This also means that it is very important for the software developer to maintain their code and patch any discovered vulnerabilities quickly. So how does an organization, the developer of an IoT product or a regular user choose which software to use if they are concerned about software security and is there a way to help them do it? That is what this thesis explores.