An investigation of security conversations in stack overflow : Perceptions of security and community involvement

Lopez, Tamara and Tun, Thein T. and Bandara, Arosha and Levine, Mark and Nuseibeh, Bashar and Sharp, Helen (2018) An investigation of security conversations in stack overflow : Perceptions of security and community involvement. In: SEAD '18 Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Security Awareness from Design to Deployment :. ACM, SWE, pp. 26-32. ISBN 9781450357272

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Abstract

Developers turn to Stack Overflow and other on-line sources to find solutions to security problems, but little is known about how they engage with and guide one another in these environments or the perceptions of software security this may encourage. This study joins recent calls to understand more about how developers use Internet sources to solve security problems. As a first step, the authors have analyzed a set of questions within the security channel of Stack Overflow. Preliminary findings reveal more about this community of practitioners: who are the askers and commenters, how security questions are asked and how developers frame technical information using social and experience-based perceptions of security.