VulnEx: Exploring Open-Source Software Vulnerabilities in Large Development Organizations to Understand Risk Exposure

Frederik L. Dennig, Eren Cakmak, Henrik Plate, and Daniel A. Keim

IEEE Symposium on Visualization for Cyber Security (VizSec), pp. 79–83, 2021.

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Abstract:The prevalent usage of open-source software (OSS) has led to an increased interest in resolving potential third-party security risks by fixing common vulnerabilities and exposures (CVEs). However, even with automated code analysis tools in place, security analysts often lack the means to obtain an overview of vulnerable OSS reuse in large software organizations. In this design study, we propose VulnEx (Vulnerability Explorer), a tool to audit entire software development organizations. We introduce three complementary tablebased representations to identify and assess vulnerability exposures due to OSS, which we designed in collaboration with security analysts. The presented tool allows examining problematic projects and applications (repositories), third-party libraries, and vulnerabilities across a software organization. We show the applicability of our tool through a use case and preliminary expert feedback.

BibTeX:

@inproceedings{Dennig2021VulnEx,
  author    = {Dennig, Frederik L. and Cakmak, Eren and Plate, Henrik and Keim, Daniel A.},
  title     = {{VulnEx: Exploring Open-Source Software Vulnerabilities in Large Development Organizations to Understand Risk Exposure}},
  booktitle = {{IEEE} Symposium on Visualization for Cyber Security (VizSec)},
  pages     = {79--83},
  publisher = {{IEEE}},
  year      = {2021},
  doi       = {10.1109/VIZSEC53666.2021.00014},
  url       = {https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9629403}
}