On improving authorship attribution of source code

Abstract

Authorship attribution of source code is the task of deciding who wrote a program, given its source code. Applications include software forensics, plagiarism detection, and determining software ownership. A number of methods for the authorship attribution of source code have been proposed. This paper presents an overview and critique of the state of the art in the field. An independent comparative study is presented using an unprecedented experimental design and data set, as well as proposals for improvements and future work.