Saved in:
| Main Authors: | , , , , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2023
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.12575 |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| _version_ | 1866917731528343552 |
|---|---|
| author | Ullah, Saad Han, Mingji Pujar, Saurabh Pearce, Hammond Coskun, Ayse Stringhini, Gianluca |
| author_facet | Ullah, Saad Han, Mingji Pujar, Saurabh Pearce, Hammond Coskun, Ayse Stringhini, Gianluca |
| contents | Large Language Models (LLMs) have been suggested for use in automated vulnerability repair, but benchmarks showing they can consistently identify security-related bugs are lacking. We thus develop SecLLMHolmes, a fully automated evaluation framework that performs the most detailed investigation to date on whether LLMs can reliably identify and reason about security-related bugs. We construct a set of 228 code scenarios and analyze eight of the most capable LLMs across eight different investigative dimensions using our framework. Our evaluation shows LLMs provide non-deterministic responses, incorrect and unfaithful reasoning, and perform poorly in real-world scenarios. Most importantly, our findings reveal significant non-robustness in even the most advanced models like `PaLM2' and `GPT-4': by merely changing function or variable names, or by the addition of library functions in the source code, these models can yield incorrect answers in 26% and 17% of cases, respectively. These findings demonstrate that further LLM advances are needed before LLMs can be used as general purpose security assistants. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2312_12575 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2023 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | LLMs Cannot Reliably Identify and Reason About Security Vulnerabilities (Yet?): A Comprehensive Evaluation, Framework, and Benchmarks Ullah, Saad Han, Mingji Pujar, Saurabh Pearce, Hammond Coskun, Ayse Stringhini, Gianluca Cryptography and Security Large Language Models (LLMs) have been suggested for use in automated vulnerability repair, but benchmarks showing they can consistently identify security-related bugs are lacking. We thus develop SecLLMHolmes, a fully automated evaluation framework that performs the most detailed investigation to date on whether LLMs can reliably identify and reason about security-related bugs. We construct a set of 228 code scenarios and analyze eight of the most capable LLMs across eight different investigative dimensions using our framework. Our evaluation shows LLMs provide non-deterministic responses, incorrect and unfaithful reasoning, and perform poorly in real-world scenarios. Most importantly, our findings reveal significant non-robustness in even the most advanced models like `PaLM2' and `GPT-4': by merely changing function or variable names, or by the addition of library functions in the source code, these models can yield incorrect answers in 26% and 17% of cases, respectively. These findings demonstrate that further LLM advances are needed before LLMs can be used as general purpose security assistants. |
| title | LLMs Cannot Reliably Identify and Reason About Security Vulnerabilities (Yet?): A Comprehensive Evaluation, Framework, and Benchmarks |
| topic | Cryptography and Security |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2312.12575 |