CamBench -- Cryptographic API Misuse Detection Tool Benchmark Suite

TL;DR

CamBench is a new benchmark suite designed to fairly evaluate cryptographic API misuse detection tools, emphasizing transparency and domain-specific best practices to facilitate fair comparisons and drive future improvements.

Contribution

This work introduces CamBench, the first transparent, domain-specific benchmark suite for cryptographic API misuse detection tools, enabling fair evaluation and comparison.

Findings

CamBench provides a standardized evaluation platform.

It enables fair comparison of existing misuse detection tools.

It highlights gaps and strengths in current tools.

Abstract

Context: Cryptographic APIs are often misused in real-world applications. Therefore, many cryptographic API misuse detection tools have been introduced. However, there exists no established reference benchmark for a fair and comprehensive comparison and evaluation of these tools. While there are benchmarks, they often only address a subset of the domain or were only used to evaluate a subset of existing misuse detection tools. Objective: To fairly compare cryptographic API misuse detection tools and to drive future development in this domain, we will devise such a benchmark. Openness and transparency in the generation process are key factors to fairly generate and establish the needed benchmark. Method: We propose an approach where we derive the benchmark generation methodology from the literature which consists of general best practices in benchmarking and domain-specific benchmark generation. A part of this methodology is transparency and openness of the generation process, which is achieved by pre-registering this work. Based on our methodology we design CamBench, a fair "Cryptographic API Misuse Detection Tool Benchmark Suite". We will implement the first version of CamBench limiting the domain to Java, the JCA, and static analyses. Finally, we will use CamBench to compare current misuse detection tools and compare CamBench to related benchmarks of its domain.