Modeling Software Vulnerability Discovery Process Inculcating the Impact of Reporters

Vulnerability Discovery Models (VDMs) attempt to estimate the potential vulnerabilities present in a software that will be discovered after a software is released. A general framework is required to encompass all the attributes such as number of detectors, their skill, market share, etc. that impact the discovery of vulnerability. VDMs have been developed by various industry and researchers to assess the vulnerability trend over time. In this proposal, we try to formulate the discovery process based on the software reporters that are the legitimately working to fetch-out the vulnerabilities in a software. The available reporters present in the market impact the discovery process significantly as a vulnerability is more likely to be discovered if a greater number of users are working simultaneously. The interdisciplinary approach highlights the association of vulnerability discovery process and the number of reporters. To empirically validate the preposition, we consider three datasets and the proposed methodology perform significantly better as compared to the traditional VDMs.