JArtus: A Late-Stage Software Feature Reduction Tool for Security and Performance

An object-oriented programming language such as Java is often the developers choice for implementing such applications, primarily due to its quick development cycle, mature ecosystem, and rich community resources. With the feature-rich Java libraries, third party code, and open-source tools that are leveraged to speed up time to market, performance degradation and security can be one of the tradeoffs. Applications include code and libraries that are only partially used, and the exploitable attack surface is much larger than it needs to be. PJR is proposing JArtus, an automated software refactoring tool that allows the user to selectively remove unwanted features and/or functionality from a Java software product. JArtus will be a desktop software tool that leverages research and novel approaches to using code slicing, and soot frameworks to identify features, unused code, and libraries that can be removed from Java applications. Users will be able to select, or simply press an easy button to refactor the software, and produce a new, smaller, more efficient, more secure version of the original application. JArtus will provide feature and functionality testing, security scanning, and performance metrics for the app before and after the code reduction and refactoring process.