Cross-entropy approaches to software forensics: Source code authorship identification.

摘要

Identification of source code authorship can be a useful tool in the areas of security and forensic investigation by helping to create corroborating evidence that may send a suspected cyber terrorist, hacker, or malicious code writer to jail. When applied to academia, it can also prove a useful tool for professors who suspect students of academic dishonesty, plagiarism, or modification of source code related to programming assignments.This work focuses on cross-entropy approaches to source code authorship analysis in predicting the correct author of a given piece of source code. Factors that affect the accuracy of the algorithm, how programmer experience determines accuracy, and whether a cross-entropy approach performs better than some known source code authorship approaches are examined.