Each January on the SEI Weblog, we current the ten most-visited posts of the earlier 12 months. This 12 months’s prime 10 record highlights the SEI’s work in software program acquisition, synthetic intelligence, giant language fashions, safe coding, insider threat mitigation, and enterprise threat administration. The posts, which have been printed between January 1, 2024, and December 31, 2024, are introduced under in reverse order based mostly on the variety of visits.
by Ipek Ozkaya and Brigid O’Hearn
The fiscal 12 months 2022 Nationwide Protection Authorization Act (NDAA) Part 835, “Impartial Research on Technical Debt in Software program-Intensive Techniques,” required the Secretary of Protection to interact a federally funded analysis and growth heart (FFRDC) “to review technical debt in software-intensive programs.” To fulfill this requirement and lead this work, the Division of Protection (DoD) chosen the Carnegie Mellon College (CMU) Software program Engineering Institute (SEI), which is a acknowledged chief within the apply of managing technical debt. In line with NDAA Part 835, the aim of the research was to supply, amongst different issues, analyses and proposals on quantitative measures for assessing technical debt, present and finest practices for measuring and managing technical debt and its related prices, and practices for decreasing technical debt.
Our staff spent greater than a 12 months conducting the impartial research. The report we produced describes the conduct of the research, summarizes the technical developments noticed, and presents the ensuing suggestions. On this SEI Weblog put up, we summarize a number of suggestions that apply to the DoD and different growth organizations looking for to research, handle, and cut back technical debt. You will discover a whole dialogue of the research methodology, findings, and proposals within the SEI’s Report back to the Congressional Protection Committees on Nationwide Protection Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal 12 months 2022 Part 835 Impartial Research on Technical Debt in Software program-Intensive Techniques.
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by Douglas Schmidt and John E. Robert
There may be appreciable curiosity in utilizing generative AI instruments, equivalent to giant language fashions (LLMs), to revolutionize industries and create new alternatives within the industrial and authorities domains. For a lot of Division of Protection (DoD) software program acquisition professionals, the promise of LLMs is interesting, however there’s additionally a deep-seated concern that LLMs don’t tackle at the moment’s challenges resulting from privateness considerations, potential for inaccuracy within the output, and insecurity or uncertainty about tips on how to use LLMs successfully and responsibly. This weblog put up is the second in a collection devoted to exploring how generative AI, significantly LLMs equivalent to ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, could be utilized throughout the DoD to reinforce software program acquisition actions.
Our first weblog put up on this collection introduced 10 Advantages and 10 Challenges of Making use of LLMs to DoD Software program Acquisition and urged particular use circumstances the place generative AI can present worth to software program acquisition actions. This second weblog put up expands on that dialogue by displaying particular examples of utilizing LLMs for software program acquisition within the context of a doc summarization experiment, in addition to codifying the teachings we realized from this experiment and our associated work on making use of generative AI to software program engineering.
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by Robin Ruefle
Incident response is a essential want all through authorities and business as cyber menace actors look to compromise essential belongings inside organizations with cascading, usually catastrophic, results. In 2021, for instance, a hacker allegedly accessed a Florida water therapy plant’s laptop programs and poisoned the water provide. Throughout the U.S. essential nationwide infrastructure, 77 % of organizations have seen an increase in insider-driven cyber threats during the last three years. The 2023 IBM Value of a Knowledge Breach report highlights the essential position of getting a well-tested incident response plan. Corporations with out a examined plan in place will face 82 % increased prices within the occasion of a cyber assault, in contrast to people who have applied and examined such a plan.
Researchers within the SEI CERT Division compiled 10 classes realized from our greater than 35 years of growing and dealing with incident response and safety groups all through the globe. These classes are related to incident response groups contending with an ever-evolving cyber menace panorama. In honor of the CERT Division (additionally referred to the CERT Coordination Heart in our work with the Discussion board of Incident Response and Safety Groups) celebrating 35 years of operation, on this weblog put up we have a look again at a few of the classes realized from our Cyber Safety Incident Response Crew (CSIRT) capability constructing experiences that additionally apply to different areas of safety operations.
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by Roger Black
In line with a 2023 Ponemon research, the variety of reported insider threat incidents and the prices related to them continues to rise. With greater than 7,000 reported circumstances in 2023, the common insider threat incident price organizations over $600,000. To assist organizations assess their insider threat packages and determine potential vulnerabilities that would lead to insider threats, the SEI CERT Division has launched two instruments accessible for obtain on its web site. Beforehand accessible solely to licensed companions, the Insider Menace Vulnerability Evaluation (ITVA) and Insider Menace Program Analysis (ITPE) toolkits present sensible strategies to evaluate your group’s potential to handle insider threat. This put up describes the aim and use of the toolkits, with a give attention to the workbook elements of the toolkits which can be the first strategies of program evaluation.
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by David Svoboda
In current weeks a number of vulnerabilities have rocked the Rust group, inflicting many to query the protection of the borrow checker, or of Rust basically. On this put up, we study two such vulnerabilities: the primary is CVE-2024-3094, which entails some malicious recordsdata within the xz library, and the second is CVE-2024-24576, which entails command-injection vulnerabilities in Home windows. How did these vulnerabilities come up, how have been they found, and the way do they contain Rust? Extra importantly, would possibly Rust be prone to extra comparable vulnerabilities sooner or later?
Final 12 months we printed two weblog posts in regards to the safety supplied by the Rust programming language. We mentioned the reminiscence security and concurrency security supplied by Rust’s borrow checker. We additionally described a few of the limitations of Rust’s safety mannequin, equivalent to its restricted potential to forestall varied injection assaults, and the unsafe key phrase, which permits builders to bypass Rust’s safety mannequin when crucial. Again then, our conclusion was that no language might be totally safe, but the borrow checker did present vital, albeit restricted, reminiscence and concurrency security when not bypassed with the unsafe key phrase. We additionally examined Rust by way of the lens of supply and binary evaluation, gauged its stability and maturity, and realized that the constraints and expectations for language maturity have slowly advanced over the a long time. Rust is transferring within the course of maturity at the moment, which is distinct from what was thought-about a mature programming language in 1980. Moreover, Rust has made some notable stability ensures, equivalent to promising to deprecate quite than delete any crates in crates.io to keep away from repeating the Leftpad fiasco.
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by Ipek Ozkaya, Douglas Schmidt, and Michael Hilton
The preliminary surge of pleasure and worry surrounding generative synthetic intelligence (AI) is step by step evolving right into a extra practical perspective. Whereas the jury continues to be out on the precise return on funding and tangible enhancements from generative AI, the speedy tempo of change is difficult software program engineering schooling and curricula. Educators have needed to adapt to the continued developments in generative AI to supply a practical perspective to their college students, balancing consciousness, wholesome skepticism, and curiosity.
In a current SEI webcast, researchers mentioned the affect of generative AI on software program engineering schooling. SEI and Carnegie Mellon College consultants spoke about the usage of generative AI within the curriculum and the classroom, mentioned how college and college students can most successfully use generative AI, and thought of considerations about ethics and fairness when utilizing these instruments. The panelists took questions from the viewers and drew on their expertise as educators to talk to the essential questions generative AI raises for software program engineering schooling.
This weblog put up options an edited transcript of responses from the unique webcast. Some questions and solutions have been rearranged and revised for readability.
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by Jeff Gennari, Shing-hon Lau, and Samuel J. Perl
Giant language fashions (LLMs) have proven a exceptional potential to ingest, synthesize, and summarize data whereas concurrently demonstrating vital limitations in finishing real-world duties. One notable area that presents each alternatives and dangers for leveraging LLMs is cybersecurity. LLMs might empower cybersecurity consultants to be extra environment friendly or efficient at stopping and stopping assaults. Nevertheless, adversaries might additionally use generative synthetic intelligence (AI) applied sciences in type. We have now already seen proof of actors utilizing LLMs to help in cyber intrusion actions (e.g., WormGPT, FraudGPT, and many others.). Such misuse raises many necessary cybersecurity-capability-related questions together with
- Can an LLM like GPT-4 write novel malware?
- Will LLMs grow to be essential elements of large-scale cyber-attacks?
- Can we belief LLMs to supply cybersecurity consultants with dependable info?
The reply to those questions is determined by the analytic strategies chosen and the outcomes they supply. Sadly, present strategies and strategies for evaluating the cybersecurity capabilities of LLMs will not be complete. Not too long ago, a staff of researchers within the SEI CERT Division labored with OpenAI to develop higher approaches for evaluating LLM cybersecurity capabilities. This SEI Weblog put up, excerpted from a lately printed paper that we coauthored with OpenAI researchers Joel Parish and Girish Sastry, summarizes 14 suggestions to assist assessors precisely consider LLM cybersecurity capabilities.
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by John E. Robert and Douglas Schmidt
Division of Protection (DoD) software program acquisition has lengthy been a posh and document-heavy course of. Traditionally, many software program acquisition actions, equivalent to producing Requests for Data (RFIs), summarizing authorities rules, figuring out related industrial requirements, and drafting venture standing updates, have required appreciable human-intensive effort. Nevertheless, the appearance of generative synthetic intelligence (AI) instruments, together with giant language fashions (LLMs), gives a promising alternative to speed up and streamline sure elements of the software program acquisition course of.
Software program acquisition is one among many complicated mission-critical domains that will profit from making use of generative AI to enhance and/or speed up human efforts. This weblog put up is the primary in a collection devoted to exploring how generative AI, significantly LLMs like ChatGPT-4, can improve software program acquisition actions. On this put up we current 10 advantages and 10 challenges of making use of LLMs to the software program acquisition course of and counsel particular use circumstances the place generative AI can present worth. Our focus is on offering well timed info to software program acquisition professionals, together with protection software program builders, program managers, programs engineers, cybersecurity analysts, and different key stakeholders, who function inside difficult constraints and prioritize safety and accuracy.
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by Mark Sherman
The common code pattern incorporates 6,000 defects per million traces of code, and the SEI’s analysis has discovered that 5 % of those defects grow to be vulnerabilities. This interprets to roughly 3 vulnerabilities per 10,000 traces of code. Can ChatGPT assist enhance this ratio? There was a lot hypothesis about how instruments constructed on prime of enormous language fashions (LLMs) would possibly affect software program growth, extra particularly, how they are going to change the way in which builders write code and consider it.
In March 2023 a staff of CERT Safe Coding researchers—the staff included Robert Schiela, David Svoboda, and myself—used ChatGPT 3.5 to look at the noncompliant software program code examples in our CERT Safe Coding customary, particularly the SEI CERT C Coding Commonplace. On this put up, I current our experiment and findings, which present that whereas ChatGPT 3.5 has promise, there are clear limitations.
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by Greg Touhill
The position of the chief info safety officer (CISO) has by no means been extra necessary to organizational success. The current and near-future for CISOs can be marked by breathtaking technical advances, significantly these related to the inclusion of synthetic intelligence applied sciences being built-in into enterprise capabilities, in addition to emergent authorized and regulatory challenges. Continued advances in generative synthetic intelligence (AI) will speed up the proliferation of deepfakes designed to erode public belief in on-line info and public establishments. Moreover, these challenges can be amplified by an unstable world theater during which nefarious actors and nation states chase alternatives to use any potential organizational weak spot. Some forecasts have already characterised 2024 as a strain cooker surroundings for CISOs. In such an surroundings, abilities are essential. On this put up I define the highest 10 abilities that CISOs want for 2024 and past. These suggestions draw upon my expertise because the director of the SEI’s CERT Division, in addition to my service as the primary federal chief info safety officer of the USA, main cyber operations on the U.S. Division of Homeland Safety, and my prolonged navy service as a communications and our on-line world operations officer.
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Wanting Forward in 2025
We publish a brand new put up on the SEI Weblog weekly. Within the coming months, search for posts highlighting the SEI’s work in synthetic intelligence, machine studying, cybersecurity, software program engineering, and extra.