A Generic Cognitive Dimensions Questionnaire to Evaluate the Usability of Security APIs

Abstract

Programmers use security APIs to embed security into the applications they develop. Security vulnerabilities get introduced into those applications, due to the usability issues that exist in the security APIs. Improving usability of security APIs would contribute to improve the security of applications that programmers develop. However, currently there is no methodology to evaluate the usability of security APIs. In this study, we attempt to improve the Cognitive Dimensions framework based API usability evaluation methodology, to evaluate the usability of security APIs.