In the past decades, the use of software has changed drastically, the number of available and daily used applications alone has increased significantly. This, together with an increasing willingness to divulge personal information in a digital context, can become a serious problem, since our usage behaviour greatly impacts our personal vulnerability.

There has been much research and educational work aimed at end users to prevent successful social engineering attacks, however, unfamiliarity with security risks concerns not only lay users, even many of those working in the field of software development were found to be lacking understanding of the technologies necessary to produce secure applications. They also have to rely on existing software, implementing security features for them, and need to know how to correctly integrate it into their own applications.

Crucially, the mistakes that developers and administrators of software make, can cause harm on a much greater scale than those of individual users. Even if end users all followed best practices concerning the digital handling of information, this does not protect their data if the underlying software and systems are flawed.

In this seminar, we will discuss the implications of software vulnerabilities with Prof. Matthew Smith (Universität Bonn) to arrive at a more comprehensive perspective on software and system security. We will also discuss possible measures that could be taken to ensure that security risks for users are minimised.