Choosing a profile length in the SCAP method of source code authorship attribution

Matthew F. Tennyson; Francisco J. Mitropoulos

doi:10.1109/SECON.2014.6950705

Choosing a profile length in the SCAP method of source code authorship attribution

Matthew F. Tennyson
, Francisco J. Mitropoulos

Nova Southeastern University

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

11 Scopus citations

Abstract

Source code authorship attribution is the task of determining the author of source code whose author is not explicitly known. One specific method of source code authorship attribution that has been shown to be extremely effective is the SCAP method. This method, however, relies on a parameter L that has heretofore been quite nebulous. In the SCAP method, each candidate author's known work is represented as a profile of that author, where the parameter L defines the profile's maximum length. In this study, alternative approaches for selecting a value for L were investigated. Several alternative approaches were found to perform better than the baseline approach used in the SCAP method. The approach that performed the best was empirically shown to improve the performance from 91.0% to 97.2% measured as a percentage of documents correctly attributed using a data set consisting of 7,231 programs written in Java and C++.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Conference Proceedings - IEEE SOUTHEASTCON
Publisher	Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
ISBN (Electronic)	9781479965854
ISBN (Print)	9781479965854
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1109/SECON.2014.6950705
State	Published - Mar 1 2014
Event	IEEE SoutheastCon 2014 - Lexington, United States Duration: Mar 13 2014 → Mar 16 2014

Publication series

Name	IEEE SOUTHEASTCON 2014

Conference

Conference	IEEE SoutheastCon 2014
Country/Territory	United States
City	Lexington
Period	3/13/14 → 3/16/14

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 IEEE.

ASJC Scopus Subject Areas

Computer Networks and Communications
Software
Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Control and Systems Engineering
Signal Processing

Keywords

authorship attribution
information retrieval
plagiarism detection
software forensics

Access to Document

10.1109/SECON.2014.6950705

Cite this

@inproceedings{7c79ca2eb14542698310af9f98c6fb80,

title = "Choosing a profile length in the SCAP method of source code authorship attribution",

abstract = "Source code authorship attribution is the task of determining the author of source code whose author is not explicitly known. One specific method of source code authorship attribution that has been shown to be extremely effective is the SCAP method. This method, however, relies on a parameter L that has heretofore been quite nebulous. In the SCAP method, each candidate author's known work is represented as a profile of that author, where the parameter L defines the profile's maximum length. In this study, alternative approaches for selecting a value for L were investigated. Several alternative approaches were found to perform better than the baseline approach used in the SCAP method. The approach that performed the best was empirically shown to improve the performance from 91.0\% to 97.2\% measured as a percentage of documents correctly attributed using a data set consisting of 7,231 programs written in Java and C++. ",

keywords = "authorship attribution, information retrieval, plagiarism detection, software forensics",

author = "Tennyson, \{Matthew F.\} and Mitropoulos, \{Francisco J.\}",

note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2014 IEEE.; IEEE SoutheastCon 2014 ; Conference date: 13-03-2014 Through 16-03-2014",

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doi = "10.1109/SECON.2014.6950705",

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TY - GEN

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AU - Tennyson, Matthew F.

AU - Mitropoulos, Francisco J.

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N2 - Source code authorship attribution is the task of determining the author of source code whose author is not explicitly known. One specific method of source code authorship attribution that has been shown to be extremely effective is the SCAP method. This method, however, relies on a parameter L that has heretofore been quite nebulous. In the SCAP method, each candidate author's known work is represented as a profile of that author, where the parameter L defines the profile's maximum length. In this study, alternative approaches for selecting a value for L were investigated. Several alternative approaches were found to perform better than the baseline approach used in the SCAP method. The approach that performed the best was empirically shown to improve the performance from 91.0% to 97.2% measured as a percentage of documents correctly attributed using a data set consisting of 7,231 programs written in Java and C++.

AB - Source code authorship attribution is the task of determining the author of source code whose author is not explicitly known. One specific method of source code authorship attribution that has been shown to be extremely effective is the SCAP method. This method, however, relies on a parameter L that has heretofore been quite nebulous. In the SCAP method, each candidate author's known work is represented as a profile of that author, where the parameter L defines the profile's maximum length. In this study, alternative approaches for selecting a value for L were investigated. Several alternative approaches were found to perform better than the baseline approach used in the SCAP method. The approach that performed the best was empirically shown to improve the performance from 91.0% to 97.2% measured as a percentage of documents correctly attributed using a data set consisting of 7,231 programs written in Java and C++.

KW - authorship attribution

KW - information retrieval

KW - plagiarism detection

KW - software forensics

U2 - 10.1109/SECON.2014.6950705

DO - 10.1109/SECON.2014.6950705

M3 - Conference contribution

AN - SCOPUS:84911968357

SN - 9781479965854

T3 - IEEE SOUTHEASTCON 2014

BT - Conference Proceedings - IEEE SOUTHEASTCON

PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.

T2 - IEEE SoutheastCon 2014

Y2 - 13 March 2014 through 16 March 2014

ER -

Choosing a profile length in the SCAP method of source code authorship attribution

Abstract

Publication series

Conference

Bibliographical note

ASJC Scopus Subject Areas

Keywords

Access to Document

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Cite this