arXiv AI

Large Language Models at the Intersection of Software Engineering and Software Security:An Evidence-Centered Structured Survey and Research Agenda

Large Language Models (LLMs) are evolving from simple code completion tools to repository‑scale agents capable of retrieving context, editing files, executing tools, and engaging in security‑sensitive workflows. A structured survey up to May 31 2026 reviews LLM work across software engineering and security tasks, adaptation mechanisms, artifact granularity, and evaluation design, and introduces an assurance framework that separates functional correctness, security, operational reliability, evidence provenance, and agent authority. The review highlights that while execution feedback and repository access improve engineering task completion, they do not guarantee security, and static‑analysis labels rarely ensure deployable correctness; it also identifies common validity threats and proposes a minimum reporting protocol and a research agenda focused on jointly secure‑and‑functional benchmarks, repository‑scale threat models, calibrated human oversight, longitudinal maintainability evidence, and reproducible agent evaluation.

arXiv AI
Jul 8

Beyond Refusal: A Same-Lineage Study of Aligned and Abliterated LLMs for Vulnerability Analysis

arXiv:2607. 05842v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language model (LLM)-assisted software security operates at a difficult boundary: the vulnerability-analysis terminology needed for legitimate code review, triage, and repair can closely resemble terminology associated with misuse.

By Mingchen Li, Meikang Qiu, Zifan Peng, Heng Fan, Song Fu, Junhua Ding, Yunhe Feng
arXiv AI
Jun 18

SafeClawBench: Separating Semantic, Audit-Evidence, and Sandbox Harm in Tool-Using LLM Agents

arXiv:2606. 18356v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Tool-using language-model agents introduce security failures that go beyond unsafe text: they can disclose protected objects, write persistent memory, send messages, modify databases, or trigger harmful code and tool effects.

By Yuchuan Tian, Mengyu Zheng, Haocheng Mei, Ye Yuan, Chao Xu, Xinghao Chen, Hanting Chen, Yu Wang
arXiv AI
Aug 19

From Adoption to Deployment: A Qualitative Study on AI Integration in Software Development Practice

The study investigates how software developers, architects, and AI practitioners select and integrate Large Language Models (LLMs) into modern software systems. Interviews with 22 professionals reveal that functional criteria—such as performance, accuracy, cost, and specific features—dominate model choice, while security concerns are rarely considered. The research highlights a pervasive neglect of established software supply‑chain security lessons, leading to vulnerabilities like malicious components, data leakage, and unintended behavior, and offers actionable recommendations for a proactive, security‑by‑design approach.

By Mahzabin Tamanna, Elizabeth Lin, Sparsha Gowda, Laurie Williams, Dominik Wermke
arXiv AI
Aug 19

TRUSS: Towards Task-Reliable and User-Safe Automated Agent Skill Generation

TRUSS is a framework that generates and verifies automated agent skills, ensuring they are both functionally effective and safe. It evaluates candidate skills against source evidence and nine safety properties, then tests them in a controlled environment to capture execution traces and identify failures. The system iteratively refines skills based on these results, achieving high precision in vulnerability detection and significantly improving task performance and security rates.

By Zhibo Zhang, Zhen Ouyang, Ling Shi, Kailong Wang
Hugging Face Trending Papers
Aug 18

TRUSS: Towards Task-Reliable and User-Safe Automated Agent Skill Generation

TRUSS is a framework that generates and verifies automated agent skills, ensuring they are both functionally effective and safe. It first checks functional claims against evidence and evaluates artifacts against nine safety properties, then tests admitted skills in a controlled environment to capture execution traces and identify failures. The approach achieves perfect precision and recall in vulnerability detection, significantly reduces attack success rates, and boosts task effectiveness and security rates in skill generation benchmarks.

arXiv AI
Sep 4

Beyond Reproducibility: Towards Security-Aware Evaluation of Research Artifacts

The paper "Beyond Reproducibility: Towards Security-Aware Evaluation of Research Artifacts" examines 1,388 research artifacts from top security conferences, uncovering 132,431 candidate security findings through static analysis. It introduces a taxonomy for context-aware security assessment and presents SAFE, an autonomous framework that accurately distinguishes security-relevant findings and classifies risk types. The study demonstrates that nearly 45% of findings are security-relevant, highlighting the need for security-aware evaluation alongside traditional reproducibility checks.

By Nanda Rani, Christian Rossow
arXiv AI
Aug 5

AgenticSCR: An Autonomous Agentic Secure Code Review for Immature Vulnerabilities Detection

arXiv:2601. 19138v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Secure code review is critical during pre-integration, where Atlassian developers rely on lightweight analysis tools, while deep security assessment is deferred to later stages, delaying feedback and increasing remediation costs.

By Wachiraphan Charoenwet, Kla Tantithamthavorn, Patanamon Thongtanunam, Hong Yi Lin, Minwoo Jeong, Ming Wu
arXiv AI
Aug 10

An End-to-End Agent Auditing Engine

arXiv:2608. 07346v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: With the rapid advancement of large language models (LLMs), harnesses have become essential infrastructure for deploying agents across a wide range of domains.

By Haoning Wang, Mingxun Zhang, Chenyue Yu, Yingjun Shang, Xia Hu, Guanchu Wang, Na Zou
arXiv AI
Aug 11

$A^2E$ : An End-to-End Agent Auditing Engine

arXiv:2608. 07346v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: With the rapid advancement of large language models (LLMs), harnesses have become essential infrastructure for deploying agents across a wide range of domains.

By Haoning Wang, Mingxun Zhang, Chenyue Yu, Yingjun Shang, Xia Hu, Guanchu Wang, Na Zou