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A Bayesian Ensemble Classifier for Source Code Authorship Attribution

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Similarity Search and Applications (SISAP 2014)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 8821))

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Abstract

Authorship attribution of source code is the task of deciding who wrote software, given its source code, when the author of the software is not explicitly known. There are numerous scenarios in which it is necessary to identify the author of a piece of software whose author is unknown, including software forensics investigations, plagiarism detection, and questions of software ownership. A number of methods for authorship attribution of source code have been presented in the past, including two state-of-the-art methods: SCAP and Burrows. Each of these two state-of-the-art methods was individually improved, and – as presented in this paper – an ensemble method was developed from them based on the Bayes optimal classifier. An empirical study was performed using a data set consisting of 7,231 open-source and textbook programs written in C++ and Java by thirty unique authors. The ensemble method successfully attributed 98.2% of all documents in the data set, compared to 88.9% by the Burrows baseline method and 91.0% by the SCAP baseline method.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bradley University, Peoria, IL, USA

    Matthew F. Tennyson

  2. Nova Southeastern University, Fort-Lauderdale-Davie, FL, USA

    Francisco J. Mitropoulos

Authors
  1. Matthew F. Tennyson
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  2. Francisco J. Mitropoulos
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of São Paulo, São Carlos, Brazil

    Agma Juci Machado Traina

  2. University of Sao Paulo at Sao Carlos - USP, Av. do Trabalhador Saocarlense 400, 13566-590, Sao Carlos, Brazil

    Caetano Traina Jr.

  3. University of Sal Paulo at Sao Carlos - USP, Av. do Trabalhador Saocarlense 400, 13566-590, Sao Carlos, Brazil

    Robson Leonardo Ferreira Cordeiro

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© 2014 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Tennyson, M.F., Mitropoulos, F.J. (2014). A Bayesian Ensemble Classifier for Source Code Authorship Attribution. In: Traina, A.J.M., Traina, C., Cordeiro, R.L.F. (eds) Similarity Search and Applications. SISAP 2014. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8821. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11988-5_25

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11988-5_25

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-11987-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-11988-5

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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