arXiv AI

Reinforcement Learning for Software Vulnerability Analysis: A Systematic Review with Emphasis on C/C++ Source Code and Static Analysis

arXiv:2606. 28403v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Vulnerability detection in C/C++ software remains a major security challenge due to code complexity, manual memory management, and the limitations of traditional static analysis.

arXiv AI
Jul 31

Graph Is the Verifier: Agentic Reinforcement Learning for Interprocedural Vulnerability Detection

arXiv:2607. 26656v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Real-world vulnerabilities often span multiple functions, yet most learning-based detectors classify each function in isolation: on a sample of real CVEs, we find that 71.

By Yikun Li, Ting Zhang, Jiakun Liu, Jinfeng Jiang, Yuheng Yieh, Yixin Yang, Wen Bin Leow, Yide Yin, Yintong Huo, Eng Lieh Ouh, Lwin Khin Shar, David Lo
arXiv Machine Learning
Jun 18

OpenAnt: LLM-Powered Vulnerability Discovery Through Code Decomposition, Adversarial Verification, and Dynamic Testing

arXiv:2606. 19149v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Automated vulnerability discovery in large codebases remains challenging: traditional static analysis produces high false-positive rates, while dynamic approaches such as fuzzing require substantial infrastructure and often target narrow classes of bugs.

By Nahum Korda, Gadi Evron
arXiv AI
Sep 7

Direction for Detection: A Survey of Automated Vulnerability Detection and all of its Pain Points

The paper surveys 87 influential studies on machine‑learning‑based automated vulnerability detection (ML4AVD), categorizing them by problem formulation, input and detection granularity, target languages, evaluation metrics, datasets, and detection approaches. It identifies twelve self‑reinforcing pain points—such as overreliance on binary classification of C/C++ function‑level vulnerabilities, limited language coverage, and intertwined datasets, baselines, and metrics—that trap the field in a narrow, artificial problem space. The authors propose concrete recommendations to break these feedback loops and evaluate a recent high‑profile effort, AIxCC, against these guidelines, reflecting on ML4AVD’s relevance amid the rise of agentic AI.

By Dan Ristea, Shae McFadden, Ezzeldin Shereen, Madeleine Dwyer, Sanyam Vyas, Chris Hicks, Vasilios Mavroudis
arXiv AI
Sep 25

Detecting Data Poisoning in Code Generation LLMs via Black-Box, Vulnerability-Oriented Scanning

The paper introduces CodeScan, a black-box, vulnerability-oriented scanning framework designed to detect data poisoning and backdoor attacks in code generation large language models (LLMs). CodeScan operates by analyzing structural similarities across multiple code generations, normalizing them with abstract syntax tree (AST) techniques, and then applying LLM-based vulnerability analysis to identify recurring insecure patterns. Evaluations on 117 models across three architectures and multiple sizes show over 97% detection accuracy with fewer false positives compared to prior methods.

By Shenao Yan, Shan Jin, Shimaa Ahmed, Sunpreet Singh Arora, Yiwei Cai, Yizhen Wang, Yuan Hong
Hugging Face Trending Papers
Jun 2

Learn from Your Mistakes: Tree-like Self-Play for Secure Code LLMs

While Large Language Models (LLMs) excel in code generation, they remain prone to replicating subtle yet critical vulnerabilities endemic to their training data. Current alignment techniques, such as Supervised Fine-Tuning (SFT) and Reinforcement Learning (RL), typically apply coarse-grained optimization at the sequence level.

arXiv AI
Sep 12

Beyond Static Guarantees: Measuring the Static-Pass Dynamic-Fail Gap in Security-Sensitive and LLM-Generated Python Code

The paper introduces the Static‑Pass Dynamic‑Fail (SPDF) phenomenon, showing that static analysis can miss vulnerabilities that are exploitable at runtime. Using a three‑stage pipeline—static scanning, LLM‑driven CWE reasoning, and autonomous exploit verification—it evaluated 1,355 Python samples and found that 14.53% of samples that passed static checks were actually exploitable. The study highlights that static‑analysis success and runtime security are distinct assurance layers, especially for AI‑generated and security‑sensitive code.

By Jessica Pourleyli, Maitreyee Das Urmi, Glaucia Melo