Vulnerability Identifiers in Stack Overflow Posts: Patterns and Implications

Software vulnerabilities are major flaws in security weaknesses that enable malicious activities. Due to the complexity of software systems and increased digital transformation, it is crucial to find and address security vulnerabilities. Developers often use question-and-answering sites such as Stack Overflow (SO) to discuss and share solutions related to various development issues including security vulnerabilities. However, to date, no analysis has studied the presence of vulnerability identifiers in discussions on SO. This study aims to fill the gap by analyzing how vulnerability identifiers are used in discussions to help developers address security issues. We performed an analysis on 1,508 question posts and 1,245 answers to gain insight into the characteristics of referenced security identifiers in discussions. The results show that the majority of the posts that contain vulnerability identifiers are related to security issues and the most prevalent vulnerability identifier is CVE. In addition, a significant portion of CVE IDs in questions and answers are classified as high severity, highlighting the focus of SO community on addressing critical vulnerabilities promptly. Future research could explore the impact of these discussions on actual vulnerability mitigation practices and examine how effectively developers implement solutions derived from SO insights.