Measuring Software Obfuscation Quality-A Systematic Literature Review

Software obfuscation techniques are increasingly being used to prevent attackers from exploiting security flaws and launching successful attacks. With research on software obfuscation techniques rapidly growing, many software obfuscation techniques with varying quality and strength have been proposed in the literature. However, the literature on obfuscation techniques has not yet been coherently collated and reviewed. This research paper aims to present an overview of state-of-the-art software obfuscation techniques, focusing on quality and strength. A systematic analysis and synthesis of literature published between 2010 and April 2021 has been performed to identify the common measures to quantify obfuscation and their measures, the publication venue, and the home country of the researchers. We have identified the obfuscation quality attributes, such as potency, resilience, cost, stealth, and similarity, that are the most widely used metrics to evaluate the quality of obfuscation techniques. In addition, different measures have been used to quantify these qualities, such as complexity (to measure potency), human effort (to measure resilience), efficiency (to estimate cost), and multiclass performance metrics, distance measures, and matching method (to quantify similarity). These measures were then categorized into sub-measures. The literature lacks research in the following two areas: empirical research using a case study strategy, i.e., real-world datasets, and measurements of obfuscation stealth. Researchers did not address stealth as clearly as they addressed potency, cost, and similarity

IS project management success in developing countries

The management of Information Systems (IS) projects occupies a prominent place in research given the need for continuously improve projects efficiency and efficacy. In the case of developing countries, this is even more important because projects success rates are typically lower than those of the socalled developed countries. Projects success is vital to development, because the countries not only need to use the scarce resources available in the best possible way, but also must gain trust from populations and investors to continue ensuring financing for future projects. Note that developing countries’ governments many times depend on foreign investment to undertake large projects, for instance in the construction or IS infrastructure sectors. However, there are few known studies about the success of IS projects in developing countries. To help fill this gap, we carried out a questionnaire-based survey in four countries. The focus of our survey was on IS projects from the public sector. This enabled to identify quite low levels of success, as well as an urgent need for training and education programmes on project management.IMF -International Monetary Fund(undefined