Correct Verdicts, Flawed Reasoning: Structured Auditing of LLM-based Vulnerability Reasoning

The paper introduces VERA, an automated framework that audits large language model (LLM) reasoning in software vulnerability analysis. Instead of relying on free‑form explanations, VERA requires models to produce a Structured Reasoning Record (SRR) that captures pointers, memory operations, and state transitions in machine‑readable fields. A multi‑stage judge then checks each SRR against eight reasoning failure modes, revealing that reasoning flaws are as common in correct verdicts as in incorrect ones and that VERA detects 87% of errors missed by free‑form LLM‑as‑judge evaluations.

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• llms
• benchmarks