Motivation:

The proliferation of the Internet has induced organizations to increasingly rely upon computers and networks to carry out mission critical tasks. This has made an organization's Information Technology (IT) infrastructure vulnerable to malicious attacks both from within and without. It is critical that the systems, in particular software, used to carry out such tasks are secure and resistant to such attacks. Further, IT is constantly being challenged to do more with fewer resources. The problem of building secure systems is further exacerbated by the current use of unsafe programming languages such as C or C++. The technical problem of building secure systems is rapidly becoming the crucial factor that determines an an organization's success. Therefore methods, tools, and processes used in the design and analysis of software systems -- together with techniques for assuring the quality of the code -- are critical for establishing the desired level of security, information integrity, and confidentiality of communicated information, between humans, federations, coalitions, and computers that have all come to rely on a public, and therefore untrusted medium, for communication.

The software security research track at HASE 2004 is intended to promote a lively discussion on new or novel processes and methods that deal with the enormous challenge of engineering software and systems that will continue to function correctly even when under malicious attacks.