With the growing volume of data stored in software systems, protecting confidential information has become increasingly critical. Consequently, ensuring information secrecy should be addressed throughout the software development lifecycle. While existing approaches support confidentiality analysis at design time and runtime, practical tools for detecting and evaluating side channels, among others timing channels, lack maturity to be easily used by software developers. Because side channels are often not explicitly represented in system artifacts, they go unnoticed even after deployment, posing a serious threat to sensitive information. In my thesis, I intend to present an approach for integrating timing channel analysis into different stages of the software system’s development. The goal is to bridge theoretical foundations with practical tools that developers can use to assess and improve system confidentiality. To support flexible decision-making, particularly in case a trade-off between confidentiality and other properties are necessary, the approach will include quantitative metrics. It will also enable modular analysis, allowing results from individual components to be aggregated and interpreted at the system level. Once developed, I will evaluate the approach through one or more case studies.

@inproceedings{paperbot11659,
  title = {Information Flow-Based Quantification of Timing-Based Software Systems},
  author = {Fatma Chebbi},
  booktitle = {ICSE},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.1145/3774748.3787670}
}