Software Trustworthiness Assessment Tool (STAT)

Warfighters are increasingly dependent on systems that must be reliable and secure to perform their missions. There is a growing concern about software system security because many current software systems are neither reliable nor secure. With the possibility of external agents and conditions accidentally or purposefully degrading system performance, software should ideally be secure from these threats. In short the software must be trustworthy. A method is needed for the system administrator to assess the current security level of a system and gain insight into active vulnerabilities, so risk can be actively managed rather than incorrectly assumed to be at a constant level. Also, an approach is needed to learn during runtime what behavior at a system level is “normal” and by extension, trustworthy, and what is unusual and potentially untrustworthy. We are pleased to submit this proposal to design and demonstrate the feasibility of a Software Trustworthiness Assessment Tool (STAT). This effort will investigate techniques for assessing the software trustworthiness of an integrated system during runtime. We anticipate that the results of this effort will be widely applicable to any software system where trustworthiness is a concern and analysis of individual application trustworthiness is not sufficient.