  Previous research has pointed that software applications should not depend on
programmers to provide security for end-users as majority of programmers are
not experts of computer security. On the other hand, some studies have revealed
that security experts believe programmers have a major role to play in ensuring
the end-users' security. However, there has been no investigation on what
programmers perceive about their responsibility for the end-users' security of
applications they develop. In this work, by conducting a qualitative
experimental study with 40 software developers, we attempted to understand the
programmer's perception on who is responsible for ensuring end-users' security
of the applications they develop. Results revealed majority of programmers
perceive that they are responsible for the end-users' security of applications
they develop. Furthermore, results showed that even though programmers aware of
things they need to do to ensure end-users' security, they do not often follow
them. We believe these results would change the current view on the role that
different stakeholders of the software development process (i.e. researchers,
security experts, programmers and Application Programming Interface (API)
developers) have to play in order to ensure the security of software
applications.
