Software Protection and Application Security: Understanding the Battleground

We provide a state-of-the-art explication of application security and software protection. The relationship between application security and data security, network security, and software security is discussed. Three simplified threat models for software are sketched. To better understand what attacks must be defended against in order to improve software security, we survey software attack approaches and attack tools. A simplified software security view of a software application is given, and along with illustrative examples, used to motivate a partial list of software security requirements for applications.