Confidentiality checking an object-oriented class hierarchy

Object-orientation is one of the most popular paradigms for software development. Due to its inherent ability to represent conceptual entities as objects, it has gained increasing popularity since the early 1990s, when systems such as the common object request broker architecture (CORBA) were first commercialised. Software objects can be categorised, described, organised, combined, and manipulated easily. It has been proven by the experts that OO design constructs have a significant impact on software security attributes. Confidentiality has been identified as one of the key attributes of software security. Object-oriented constructs including abstraction, encapsulation, coupling and cohesion all affect confidentiality. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.