Harnessing Large Language Models for Software Vulnerability Detection: A Comprehensive Benchmarking Study

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2405.15614v1
• Date: Fri, 24 May 2024 14:59:19 GMT
• Title: Harnessing Large Language Models for Software Vulnerability Detection: A Comprehensive Benchmarking Study
• Authors: Karl Tamberg, Hayretdin Bahsi,
• Abstract summary: We propose using large language models (LLMs) to assist in finding vulnerabilities in source code. The aim is to test multiple state-of-the-art LLMs and identify the best prompting strategies. We find that LLMs can pinpoint many more issues than traditional static analysis tools, outperforming traditional tools in terms of recall and F1 scores.
• Score: 1.03590082373586
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: Despite various approaches being employed to detect vulnerabilities, the number of reported vulnerabilities shows an upward trend over the years. This suggests the problems are not caught before the code is released, which could be caused by many factors, like lack of awareness, limited efficacy of the existing vulnerability detection tools or the tools not being user-friendly. To help combat some issues with traditional vulnerability detection tools, we propose using large language models (LLMs) to assist in finding vulnerabilities in source code. LLMs have shown a remarkable ability to understand and generate code, underlining their potential in code-related tasks. The aim is to test multiple state-of-the-art LLMs and identify the best prompting strategies, allowing extraction of the best value from the LLMs. We provide an overview of the strengths and weaknesses of the LLM-based approach and compare the results to those of traditional static analysis tools. We find that LLMs can pinpoint many more issues than traditional static analysis tools, outperforming traditional tools in terms of recall and F1 scores. The results should benefit software developers and security analysts responsible for ensuring that the code is free of vulnerabilities.

Related papers

• Learning to Ask: When LLMs Meet Unclear Instruction [49.256630152684764]
  Large language models (LLMs) can leverage external tools for addressing a range of tasks unattainable through language skills alone. We evaluate the performance of LLMs tool-use under imperfect instructions, analyze the error patterns, and build a challenging tool-use benchmark called Noisy ToolBench. We propose a novel framework, Ask-when-Needed (AwN), which prompts LLMs to ask questions to users whenever they encounter obstacles due to unclear instructions.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-08-31T23:06:12Z)
• Harnessing the Power of LLMs in Source Code Vulnerability Detection [0.0]
  Software vulnerabilities, caused by unintentional flaws in source code, are a primary root cause of cyberattacks. We harness Large Language Models' capabilities to analyze source code and detect known vulnerabilities.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-08-07T00:48:49Z)
• Exploring Automatic Cryptographic API Misuse Detection in the Era of LLMs [60.32717556756674]
  This paper introduces a systematic evaluation framework to assess Large Language Models in detecting cryptographic misuses. Our in-depth analysis of 11,940 LLM-generated reports highlights that the inherent instabilities in LLMs can lead to over half of the reports being false positives. The optimized approach achieves a remarkable detection rate of nearly 90%, surpassing traditional methods and uncovering previously unknown misuses in established benchmarks.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-07-23T15:31:26Z)
• Comparison of Static Application Security Testing Tools and Large Language Models for Repo-level Vulnerability Detection [11.13802281700894]
  Static Application Security Testing (SAST) is usually utilized to scan source code for security vulnerabilities. Deep learning (DL)-based methods have demonstrated their potential in software vulnerability detection. This paper compares 15 diverse SAST tools with 12 popular or state-of-the-art open-source LLMs in detecting software vulnerabilities.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-07-23T07:21:14Z)
• AutoDetect: Towards a Unified Framework for Automated Weakness Detection in Large Language Models [95.09157454599605]
  Large Language Models (LLMs) are becoming increasingly powerful, but they still exhibit significant but subtle weaknesses. Traditional benchmarking approaches cannot thoroughly pinpoint specific model deficiencies. We introduce a unified framework, AutoDetect, to automatically expose weaknesses in LLMs across various tasks.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-06-24T15:16:45Z)
• Towards Effectively Detecting and Explaining Vulnerabilities Using Large Language Models [17.96542494363619]
  Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable capabilities in comprehending complex contexts. In this paper, we conduct a study to investigate the capabilities of LLMs in both detecting and explaining vulnerabilities. Under specialized fine-tuning for vulnerability explanation, our LLMVulExp not only detects the types of vulnerabilities in the code but also analyzes the code context to generate the cause, location, and repair suggestions.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-06-14T04:01:25Z)
• CLAMBER: A Benchmark of Identifying and Clarifying Ambiguous Information Needs in Large Language Models [60.59638232596912]
  We introduce CLAMBER, a benchmark for evaluating large language models (LLMs) Building upon the taxonomy, we construct 12K high-quality data to assess the strengths, weaknesses, and potential risks of various off-the-shelf LLMs. Our findings indicate the limited practical utility of current LLMs in identifying and clarifying ambiguous user queries.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-05-20T14:34:01Z)
• A Comprehensive Study of the Capabilities of Large Language Models for Vulnerability Detection [9.422811525274675]
  Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated great potential for code generation and other software engineering tasks. Vulnerability detection is of crucial importance to maintaining the security, integrity, and trustworthiness of software systems. Recent work has applied LLMs to vulnerability detection using generic prompting techniques, but their capabilities for this task and the types of errors they make remain unclear.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-03-25T21:47:36Z)
• Efficient Tool Use with Chain-of-Abstraction Reasoning [65.18096363216574]
  Large language models (LLMs) need to ground their reasoning to real-world knowledge. There remains challenges for fine-tuning LLM agents to invoke tools in multi-step reasoning problems. We propose a new method for LLMs to better leverage tools in multi-step reasoning.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2024-01-30T21:53:30Z)
• How Far Have We Gone in Vulnerability Detection Using Large Language Models [15.09461331135668]
  We introduce a comprehensive vulnerability benchmark VulBench. This benchmark aggregates high-quality data from a wide range of CTF challenges and real-world applications. We find that several LLMs outperform traditional deep learning approaches in vulnerability detection.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2023-11-21T08:20:39Z)
• Are Large Language Models Really Robust to Word-Level Perturbations? [68.60618778027694]
  We propose a novel rational evaluation approach that leverages pre-trained reward models as diagnostic tools. Longer conversations manifest the comprehensive grasp of language models in terms of their proficiency in understanding questions. Our results demonstrate that LLMs frequently exhibit vulnerability to word-level perturbations that are commonplace in daily language usage.
  arXiv  Detail & Related papers  (2023-09-20T09:23:46Z)

This list is automatically generated from the titles and abstracts of the papers in this site.

This site does not guarantee the quality of this site (including all information) and is not responsible for any consequences.