arXiv AI

When LLM Decompilers Recompile More and Preserve Less

The paper examines how large‑language‑model (LLM) decompilers, which produce clean, idiomatic C code, are currently evaluated mainly on recompilability and passing shipped tests. It shows that these metrics can mask significant behavioral differences: a decompiled function may recompile and pass all tests yet diverge on other inputs or lose disclosed vulnerabilities. To address this, the authors propose Decompile‑Diverge, a behavioral oracle that synthesizes drivers, fuzzes inputs, and compares the decompiled code’s behavior to the original, revealing divergences in up to 13% of cases and exposing gaps in current evaluation suites.

arXiv AI
Aug 19

Probing the Prefill: Detecting Code Vulnerabilities via Latent Activations

The paper investigates whether the hidden activations of large language models (LLMs) contain signals about the vulnerability of C/C++ code when the code is provided as context. By extracting prefill token activations from four LLMs and training small MLP probes, the authors achieve an average F1 score of 41.7% across four benchmarks, with the best probe matching state‑of‑the‑art fine‑tuned classifiers on the Devign dataset. The results suggest that a coding LLM’s internal representation can inform vulnerability detection, opening the door to lightweight, model‑native screening methods.

By Alizishaan Khatri
arXiv AI
3d ago

Recompilation Is Not Enough: Test-Guided Decompiled-C Repair

The paper discusses a workflow for repairing decompiled C code that goes beyond mere recompilation. It uses compiler and linker diagnostics to guide initial repair, then applies smoke checks and official tests to ensure the recompiled binary behaves as expected. In a study of 104 Coreutils binaries, 87.5% successfully recompiled and passed the test gate, while a small portion failed to recompile or still failed tests.

By Yuhan Huang, Puzhuo Liu, Jianlei Chi
arXiv AI
1d ago

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
arXiv AI
6d ago

The History Is the Detector: Executing CVE Patch History, End-to-End

The paper introduces BUGSTONE‑E2E, a framework that converts vulnerability history into executable detection rules and validates them. It mines reusable rules from fixing commits, organizes them by CWE and language, and applies a funnel‑shaped pipeline that starts with lightweight analysis and culminates in LLM‑guided inspection, runtime verification, and patch generation. Using 19,325 high‑severity CVEs, the system identified 2,710 fixing commits, created 1,033 detection rules across 56 CWE families, and produced runtime evidence for 644 findings in 14 programs.

By Qiushi Wu, Kevin Eykholt, Youngja Park, Xiaokui Shu, Dhilung Kirat, Douglas Lee Schales, Ian Molloy
arXiv AI
Jun 6

Willing but Unable: Separating Refusal from Capability in Code LLMs via Abliteration

arXiv:2606. 05396v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Producing a labeled vulnerable code at scale is a recurring obstacle for learning-based vulnerability detection: mined corpora carry substantial label noise, and existing LLM-based augmentation propagates these inaccuracies because it transforms vulnerable seeds rather than synthesising vulnerabilities from a specification.

By Cristina Carleo, Pietro Liguori, Naghmeh Ivaki, Domenico Cotroneo
arXiv AI
Aug 5

Don't Regenerate, Debug: A Domain-Specific Agent for Repairing Near-Miss Hardware Operators

arXiv:2608. 02712v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Kernel generation for hardware accelerators such as GPUs and NPUs has become a proving ground for large language models (LLMs), and state-of-the-art systems raise correctness through pipelines that couple LLMs with agentic reinforcement learning and evolutionary search.

By Yansong Sun, Shenxiu Wu, Siyuan Chen, Runlin Hou, Junhao Qiu, Junming Cao, Shudi Shao, Zhichao Lu, Qingfu Zhang