The Impact of Defensive Programming on I/O Cybersecurity Attacks

Abstract

This paper presents principles of Defensive Programming and examines the growing concern that these principles are not effectively incorporated into Computer Science and related computing degree programs' curricula. To support this concern, Defensive Programming principles are applied to a case study - Cross-site Scripting cybersecurity attacks. This paper concludes that Defensive Programming plays an important role in preventing these attacks and should thus be more aggressively integrated into CS courses such as Programming, Algorithms, Databases, Computer Architecture and Organization, and Computer Networks.