Examining the significance of high-level programming features in source code author classification

• Published in: The Journal of systems and software Vol. 81; no. 3; pp. 447 - 460
• Main Authors: Frantzeskou, Georgia, MacDonell, Stephen, Stamatatos, Efstathios, Gritzalis, Stefanos
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Elsevier Inc 01-03-2008; Elsevier Sequoia S.A
• Subjects: Accuracy; Authorship; Codes; Comparative analysis; Fraud; Java; LISP; Program features; Programmers; Source code; Studies; Fraud; Authorship; Source code; Program features
• ISSN: 0164-1212; 1873-1228
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jss.2007.03.004

The use of Source Code Author Profiles (SCAP) represents a new, highly accurate approach to source code authorship identification that is, unlike previous methods, language independent. While accuracy is clearly a crucial requirement of any author identification method, in cases of litigation regarding authorship, plagiarism, and so on, there is also a need to know
why it is claimed that a piece of code is written by a particular author. What is it about that piece of code that suggests a particular author? What features in the code make one author more likely than another? In this study, we describe a means of identifying the high-level features that contribute to source code authorship identification using as a tool the SCAP method. A variety of features are considered for Java and Common Lisp and the importance of each feature in determining authorship is measured through a sequence of experiments in which we remove one feature at a time. The results show that, for these programs, comments, layout features and package-related naming influence classification accuracy whereas user-defined naming, an obvious programmer related feature, does not appear to influence accuracy. A comparison is also made between the relative feature contributions in programs written in the two languages.