Download Tools for static code analysis: A survey

Chapter 1
Introduction
This chapter will give the reader an introduction to the thesis. It contains a
background, which questions that are to be answered and the goal of the thesis.
It also contains an overview of the thesis layout.
1.1
Background
Imagine that you are sitting on the bus and have nothing to do but staring out the
window when suddenly you remember that yesterday you downloaded the latest
episode of your favorite TV show to your home multimedia server. You pick up
your IMS (Internet Multimedia Subsystem) compliant mobile phone and connect
to your multimedia server at home and after a minute or two the TV show is
streaming to your phone with perfect quality, making your bus ride a little more
enjoyable. This is a scenario that could be happening in a not so distant future.
The IMS is an architectural framework for delivering multimedia over the Internet protocol (IP) to mobile users and was initially standardized by the 3rd
Generation Partnership Program (3GPP) as a new service layer on top of IPbased 3G networks back in 2003 [15]. Since then a lot has happened and today
services such as Push to Talk over Cellular (PoC) and TV over IP (IPTV) are
some of the features available in the IMS.
One new service that today experiences heavy research on Ericsson AB is the
Home IMS Gateway (HIGA). This is a residential gateway which will act as a
bridge between the outer IMS services mentioned before and the inner, non-IMS
home devices, such as TVs, PCs or media servers. In other words it will give the
users the freedom of accessing their home computers etc. with the help of their
phones wherever they might be. However, this freedom comes with the drawback
that it opens up yet another way into a user’s private network and it is of crucial
importance that the gateway is secure and robust against all types of attacks1 .
But how can one make sure that it really is secure and is able to withstand most
1 Not only attacks that aim at breaking in to a users private network, but also attacks whose
goal is to bring down the HIGA and thereby bringing down the availability of the services it
provides.
1