Contextual Profiling of Stack Overflow Java Code Security Vulnerabilities Initial Insights from a Pilot Study

Stack Overflow is noteworthy in the value it provides to the practitioner community. However, concerns have also been expressed around the quality of content that is included on this website. Researchers have thus studied Stack Overflow code snippet quality, with particular focus on security issues. However, there has been less effort aimed at providing concrete solutions and demonstrations of the debilitating effects (vulnerabilities) of Stack Overflow security issues. In this pilot study, we bridge this gap by using inductive analyses to study the scale of security faults on Stack Overflow, and contributors' awareness of these faults and their fixes. We also examine the potential debilitating effects of Stack Overflow code snippets security faults and mechanisms for cataloguing security faults for practitioners. Our outcomes reveal that most Stack Overflow code snippets do not possess security faults. However, some code snippets with faults are accepted by the community. We note that the security faults observed in Stack Overflow code snippets are likely to result in various levels of security breaches and ensuing consequences. Thus, our attempt at providing a preliminary catalogue could be useful and encouraging for the community to further develop. While this is an initial step, ongoing efforts aimed at investigating and enhancing the code on online portals are noteworthy for helping the community to deliver secure software.