Security and emotion: sentiment analysis of security discussions on GitHub

Abstract

Application security is becoming increasingly prevalent during software and especially web application development. Consequently, countermeasures are continuously being discussed and built into applications, with the goal of reducing the risk that unauthorized code will be able to access, steal, modify, or delete sensitive data. In this paper we gauged the presence and atmosphere surrounding security-related discussions on GitHub, as mined from discussions around commits and pull requests. First, we found that security related discussions account for approximately 10% of all discussions on GitHub. Second, we found that more negative emotions are expressed in security-related discussions than in other discussions. These findings confirm the importance of properly training developers to address security concerns in their applications as well as the need to test applications thoroughly for security vulnerabilities in order to reduce frustration and improve overall project atmosphere.