Usable Secure Software Design and Development

网络安全现在是一个具有紧迫全球重要性的问题。虽然安全的技术基础设施仍然至关重要，但许多成功和毁灭性的攻击都涉及利用不可避免的人类失误。一些攻击者专注于影响人类决策的欺骗，其中最终用户被欺骗信任欺诈性电子邮件或网站，或安装恶意软件。这些导致隐私和机密性的妥协，以及资源和勒索软件的盗窃。其他攻击者则专注于软件代码中的漏洞，数十年的软件设计和流程工作并没有解决安全性的对抗性，程序员很容易忽略必要的检查或依赖性。我的研究计划是在可用安全的一般领域，涉及网络安全和人机交互。该计划涉及两个具体的研究路线。第一个问题涉及最终用户的安全决策。第二个解决了影响软件开发人员的可用安全问题。安全决策的工作涉及心智模型。心理模型理论可以追溯到几十年前，并假设因果关系的认知模型，预测可能的后果。有几个相关的问题领域需要这项工作：网站合法性，攻击者创建欺诈性网站来欺骗用户获取凭据或提供恶意软件;电子邮件合法性，钓鱼电子邮件欺骗用户访问欺诈性网站或下载恶意软件;以及软件合法性，攻击者创建恶意软件定位为良性软件。所有这些都需要用户做出决定，而且在所有情况下，用户都得不到很好的支持。我建议研究设计用户交互的方法，以更好地支持和开发安全的心理模型，从而帮助用户做出更好的安全决策。网络安全漏洞的另一个来源涉及软件开发，其中意外的代码漏洞在软件和供应链中未被发现。我特别感兴趣的是软件开发的协作方面，我建议将这项工作扩展到专门与安全相关的协作。在开发过程的早期解决安全问题的概念已经提出了很长时间，并且似乎表明协作可能非常有用。然而，最近的研究表明，这些方法很少使用，影响也很小。我的工作将探索对抗性协作和多样化故障检测等方法，我将与软件开发团队合作，以确定改进的方法。

Cybersecurity is now a problem of urgent global importance. While secure technical infrastructure remains critical, many successful and devastating attacks involve exploiting inevitable human fallibilities. Some attackers focus on deception affecting human decision-making, where end-users are tricked into trusting fraudulent email or websites, or installing malware. These lead to compromises in privacy and confidentiality, as well as theft of resources and ransomware. Other attackers focus on vulnerabilities in software code, where decades of work in software design and process do not address the adversarial nature of security, and programmers can easily overlook necessary checks or dependencies. My research program is in the general area of Usable Security, involving both Cybersecurity and Human-Computer Interaction. The program involves two specific lines of research. The first addresses end-user security decision-making. The second addresses the usable security issues that affect software developers. The work on security decision-making involves mental models. Mental model theory dates back decades, and supposes cognitive models of cause and effect that predict possible consequences. There are several related problem areas where this work is needed: website legitimacy, where attackers create fraudulent websites to deceive users to obtain credentials or provide malware; email legitimacy, where phishing email deceives users into visiting fraudulent websites or downloading malware; and software legitimacy, where attackers create malware positioned as benign software. All require users to make decisions, and in all cases users are poorly supported. I propose studying ways to design user interaction to better support and develop mental models of security, thus helping users make better security decisions. Another source of cybersecurity weakness involves software development, where accidental code vulnerabilities go undetected in software and supply chains. My particular interest has been on the collaborative aspects of software development, and I propose to extend this work to focus on collaborations relating specifically to security. Concepts for addressing security issues early within the development process have long been proposed, and seem to suggest collaboration can be very helpful. However, recent studies show these are little used and have low impact. My work will explore methods such adversarial collaboration and diverse fault detection, and I will work with software development teams to identify ways to improve.