The Multiple Facets of Software Diversity: Recent Developments in Year 2000 and Beyond

TL;DR

This paper provides a comprehensive survey of recent developments in software diversity since 2000, covering classical and modern approaches across fault tolerance, security, and software engineering, highlighting the field's broadening scope.

Contribution

It offers an inclusive overview of software diversity, integrating classical, cybersecurity, natural diversity, and management perspectives, emphasizing recent advances and unifying the field.

Findings

Expands understanding of software diversity's multiple facets.

Highlights recent advances in automated and managed diversity.

Connects classical and modern approaches across various domains.

Abstract

Early experiments with software diversity in the mid 1970's investigated N-version programming and recovery blocks to increase the reliability of embedded systems. Four decades later, the literature about software diversity has expanded in multiple directions: goals (fault-tolerance, security, software engineering); means (managed or automated diversity) and analytical studies (quantification of diversity and its impact). Our paper contributes to the field of software diversity as the first paper that adopts an inclusive vision of the area, with an emphasis on the most recent advances in the field. This survey includes classical work about design and data diversity for fault tolerance, as well as the cybersecurity literature that investigates randomization at different system levels. It broadens this standard scope of diversity, to include the study and exploitation of natural diversity and the management of diverse software products. Our survey includes the most recent works, with an emphasis from 2000 to present. The targeted audience is researchers and practitioners in one of the surveyed fields, who miss the big picture of software diversity. Assembling the multiple facets of this fascinating topic sheds a new light on the field.