Each January on the SEI Weblog, we current the 10-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 had 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 Examine on Technical Debt in Software program-Intensive Methods,” required the Secretary of Protection to have interaction a federally funded analysis and growth heart (FFRDC) “to check technical debt in software-intensive techniques.” 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 examine was to offer, amongst different issues, analyses and suggestions 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 examine. The report we produced describes the conduct of the examine, summarizes the technical tendencies noticed, and presents the ensuing suggestions. On this SEI Weblog publish, we summarize a number of suggestions that apply to the DoD and different growth organizations searching for to research, handle, and cut back technical debt. You will discover an entire dialogue of the examine methodology, findings, and suggestions 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 Examine on Technical Debt in Software program-Intensive Methods.
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by Douglas Schmidt and John E. Robert
There may be appreciable curiosity in utilizing generative AI instruments, akin to giant language fashions (LLMs), to revolutionize industries and create new alternatives within the business 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 handle in the present day’s challenges resulting from privateness issues, potential for inaccuracy within the output, and insecurity or uncertainty about learn how to use LLMs successfully and responsibly. This weblog publish is the second in a sequence devoted to exploring how generative AI, significantly LLMs akin to ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, could be utilized throughout the DoD to boost software program acquisition actions.
Our first weblog publish on this sequence introduced 10 Advantages and 10 Challenges of Making use of LLMs to DoD Software program Acquisition and prompt particular use circumstances the place generative AI can present worth to software program acquisition actions. This second weblog publish expands on that dialogue by exhibiting particular examples of utilizing LLMs for software program acquisition within the context of a doc summarization experiment, in addition to codifying the teachings we discovered 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 important want all through authorities and trade as cyber risk actors look to compromise important property inside organizations with cascading, usually catastrophic, results. In 2021, for instance, a hacker allegedly accessed a Florida water therapy plant’s laptop techniques and poisoned the water provide. Inside the U.S. important nationwide infrastructure, 77 % of organizations have seen an increase in insider-driven cyber threats over the past three years. The 2023 IBM Price of a Knowledge Breach report highlights the essential position of getting a well-tested incident response plan. Corporations and not using a examined plan in place will face 82 % larger 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 discovered 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 risk panorama. In honor of the CERT Division (additionally referred to the CERT Coordination Middle in our work with the Discussion board of Incident Response and Safety Groups) celebrating 35 years of operation, on this weblog publish we have a look again at a few of the classes discovered from our Cyber Safety Incident Response Group (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 examine, 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 value organizations over $600,000. To assist organizations assess their insider threat applications and determine potential vulnerabilities that might end in 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 Risk Vulnerability Evaluation (ITVA) and Insider Risk Program Analysis (ITPE) toolkits present sensible strategies to evaluate your group’s skill to handle insider threat. This publish describes the aim and use of the toolkits, with a give attention to the workbook parts of the toolkits which might be the first strategies of program evaluation.
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by David Svoboda
In latest 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 publish, 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 had been they found, and the way do they contain Rust? Extra importantly, may Rust be vulnerable to extra related vulnerabilities sooner or later?
Final 12 months we printed two weblog posts concerning the safety offered by the Rust programming language. We mentioned the reminiscence security and concurrency security offered by Rust’s borrow checker. We additionally described a few of the limitations of Rust’s safety mannequin, akin to its restricted skill to forestall varied injection assaults, and the unsafe key phrase, which permits builders to bypass Rust’s safety mannequin when needed. Again then, our conclusion was that no language might be totally safe, but the borrow checker did present important, albeit restricted, reminiscence and concurrency security when not bypassed with the unsafe key phrase. We additionally examined Rust via the lens of supply and binary evaluation, gauged its stability and maturity, and realized that the constraints and expectations for language maturity have slowly developed over the many years. Rust is shifting within the course of maturity in the present day, which is distinct from what was thought-about a mature programming language in 1980. Moreover, Rust has made some notable stability ensures, akin to promising to deprecate reasonably 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 regularly evolving right into a extra real looking 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 continuing developments in generative AI to offer a practical perspective to their college students, balancing consciousness, wholesome skepticism, and curiosity.
In a latest SEI webcast, researchers mentioned the impression 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 regarded issues 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 important questions generative AI raises for software program engineering schooling.
This weblog publish 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
Massive language fashions (LLMs) have proven a outstanding skill to ingest, synthesize, and summarize information whereas concurrently demonstrating important 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 variety. We have now already seen proof of actors utilizing LLMs to help in cyber intrusion actions (e.g., WormGPT, FraudGPT, and so on.). Such misuse raises many essential cybersecurity-capability-related questions together with
- Can an LLM like GPT-4 write novel malware?
- Will LLMs turn into important parts of large-scale cyber-attacks?
- Can we belief LLMs to offer cybersecurity consultants with dependable info?
The reply to those questions depends upon 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. Just lately, a staff of researchers within the SEI CERT Division labored with OpenAI to develop higher approaches for evaluating LLM cybersecurity capabilities. This SEI Weblog publish, 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, akin to producing Requests for Data (RFIs), summarizing authorities laws, figuring out related business 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 facets of the software program acquisition course of.
Software program acquisition is considered one of many advanced mission-critical domains which will profit from making use of generative AI to reinforce and/or speed up human efforts. This weblog publish is the primary in a sequence devoted to exploring how generative AI, significantly LLMs like ChatGPT-4, can improve software program acquisition actions. On this publish we current 10 advantages and 10 challenges of making use of LLMs to the software program acquisition course of and recommend 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, techniques 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 typical code pattern accommodates 6,000 defects per million traces of code, and the SEI’s analysis has discovered that 5 % of those defects turn into 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) may impression software program growth, extra particularly, how they are going to change the best way 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 normal, particularly the SEI CERT C Coding Customary. On this publish, 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 essential to organizational success. The current and near-future for CISOs will likely be marked by breathtaking technical advances, significantly these related to the inclusion of synthetic intelligence applied sciences being built-in into enterprise features, 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 will likely be amplified by an unstable international theater through which nefarious actors and nation states chase alternatives to use any potential organizational weak spot. Some forecasts have already characterised 2024 as a stress cooker surroundings for CISOs. In such an surroundings, expertise are important. On this publish I define the highest 10 expertise 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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Trying Forward in 2025
We publish a brand new publish 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.
