Related papers: Stack Overflow Considered Harmful? The Impact of C…

Developers use Question and Answer (Q&A) websites to exchange knowledge and expertise. Stack Overflow is a popular Q&A website where developers discuss coding problems and share code examples. Although all Stack Overflow posts are free to…

Software developers share programming solutions in Q&A sites like Stack Overflow. The reuse of crowd-sourced code snippets can facilitate rapid prototyping. However, recent research shows that the shared code snippets may be of low quality…

The widespread use of smartphones and tablets has made society heavily reliant on mobile applications (apps) for accessing various resources and services. These apps often handle sensitive personal, financial, and health data, making app…

Online code clones are code fragments that are copied from software projects or online sources to Stack Overflow as examples. Due to an absence of a checking mechanism after the code has been copied to Stack Overflow, they can become toxic…

Android applications are frequently plagiarized or repackaged, and software obfuscation is a recommended protection against these practices. However, there is very little data on the overall rates of app obfuscation, the techniques used, or…

Enriched by natural language texts, Stack Overflow code snippets are an invaluable code-centric knowledge base of small units of source code. Besides being useful for software developers, these annotated snippets can potentially serve as…

The Android ecosystem is vulnerable to issues such as app repackaging, counterfeiting, and piracy, threatening both developers and users. To mitigate these risks, developers often employ code obfuscation techniques. However, while effective…

When programmers look for how to achieve certain programming tasks, Stack Overflow is a popular destination in search engine results. Over the years, Stack Overflow has accumulated an impressive knowledge base of snippets of code that are…

As one of the most well-known programmer Q&A websites, Stack Overflow (i.e., SO) is serving tens of thousands of developers every day. Previous work has shown that many developers reuse the code snippets on SO when they find an answer (from…

Android is the most used Operating System worldwide for mobile devices, with hundreds of thousands of apps downloaded daily. Although these apps are primarily written in Java and Kotlin, advanced functionalities such as graphics or…

Despite the unarguable importance of Stack Overflow (SO) for the daily work of many software developers and despite existing knowledge about the impact of code duplication on software maintainability, the prevalence and implications of code…

We performed two online surveys of Stack Overflow answerers and visitors to assess their awareness to outdated code and software licenses in Stack Overflow answerers. The answerer survey targeted 607 highly reputed Stack Overflow users and…

Mobile applications (apps) have become an essential part of everyday life, offering convenient access to services such as banking, healthcare, and shopping. With these apps handling sensitive personal and financial data, ensuring their…

Third-party Software Development Kits (SDKs) are widely adopted in Android app development, to effortlessly accelerate development pipelines and enhance app functionality. However, this convenience raises substantial concerns about…

Android apps can hold secret strings of themselves such as cloud service credentials or encryption keys. Leakage of such secret strings can induce unprecedented consequences like monetary losses or leakage of user private information. In…

Third-party security apps are an integral part of the Android app ecosystem. Many users install them as an extra layer of protection for their devices. There are hundreds of such security apps, both free and paid in Google Play Store and…

The Android permission system is a set of controls to regulate access to sensitive data and platform resources (e.g., camera). The fast evolving nature of Android permissions, coupled with inadequate documentation, results in numerous…

Developers frequently reuse Stack Overflow code snippets, yet the quality of these snippets remains unevenly understood, particularly across programming languages and geographic contexts. This study investigates code quality in Stack…

Question-and-answer platforms such as Stack Overflow are an important way for software developers to share and retrieve knowledge. However, reusing poorly understood code can lead to serious problems, such as bugs or security…

Sonatype's 2023 report found that 97% of developers and security leads integrate generative Artificial Intelligence (AI), particularly Large Language Models (LLMs), into their development process. Concerns about the security implications of…