Dynamic Neural Control Flow Execution: An Agent-Based Deep Equilibrium Approach for Binary Vulnerability Detection

Fuente: arXiv
Guardado en:
Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Li, Litao, Ding, Steven H. H., Walenstein, Andrew, Charland, Philippe, Fung, Benjamin C. M.
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2024
Materias:
Acceso en línea:
Etiquetas: Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
_version_ 1866917638491340800
author Li, Litao
Ding, Steven H. H.
Walenstein, Andrew
Charland, Philippe
Fung, Benjamin C. M.
author_facet Li, Litao
Ding, Steven H. H.
Walenstein, Andrew
Charland, Philippe
Fung, Benjamin C. M.
contents Software vulnerabilities are a challenge in cybersecurity. Manual security patches are often difficult and slow to be deployed, while new vulnerabilities are created. Binary code vulnerability detection is less studied and more complex compared to source code, and this has important practical implications. Deep learning has become an efficient and powerful tool in the security domain, where it provides end-to-end and accurate prediction. Modern deep learning approaches learn the program semantics through sequence and graph neural networks, using various intermediate representation of programs, such as abstract syntax trees (AST) or control flow graphs (CFG). Due to the complex nature of program execution, the output of an execution depends on the many program states and inputs. Also, a CFG generated from static analysis can be an overestimation of the true program flow. Moreover, the size of programs often does not allow a graph neural network with fixed layers to aggregate global information. To address these issues, we propose DeepEXE, an agent-based implicit neural network that mimics the execution path of a program. We use reinforcement learning to enhance the branching decision at every program state transition and create a dynamic environment to learn the dependency between a vulnerability and certain program states. An implicitly defined neural network enables nearly infinite state transitions until convergence, which captures the structural information at a higher level. The experiments are conducted on two semi-synthetic and two real-world datasets. We show that DeepEXE is an accurate and efficient method and outperforms the state-of-the-art vulnerability detection methods.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2404_08562
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Dynamic Neural Control Flow Execution: An Agent-Based Deep Equilibrium Approach for Binary Vulnerability Detection
Li, Litao
Ding, Steven H. H.
Walenstein, Andrew
Charland, Philippe
Fung, Benjamin C. M.
Cryptography and Security
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
Software vulnerabilities are a challenge in cybersecurity. Manual security patches are often difficult and slow to be deployed, while new vulnerabilities are created. Binary code vulnerability detection is less studied and more complex compared to source code, and this has important practical implications. Deep learning has become an efficient and powerful tool in the security domain, where it provides end-to-end and accurate prediction. Modern deep learning approaches learn the program semantics through sequence and graph neural networks, using various intermediate representation of programs, such as abstract syntax trees (AST) or control flow graphs (CFG). Due to the complex nature of program execution, the output of an execution depends on the many program states and inputs. Also, a CFG generated from static analysis can be an overestimation of the true program flow. Moreover, the size of programs often does not allow a graph neural network with fixed layers to aggregate global information. To address these issues, we propose DeepEXE, an agent-based implicit neural network that mimics the execution path of a program. We use reinforcement learning to enhance the branching decision at every program state transition and create a dynamic environment to learn the dependency between a vulnerability and certain program states. An implicitly defined neural network enables nearly infinite state transitions until convergence, which captures the structural information at a higher level. The experiments are conducted on two semi-synthetic and two real-world datasets. We show that DeepEXE is an accurate and efficient method and outperforms the state-of-the-art vulnerability detection methods.
title Dynamic Neural Control Flow Execution: An Agent-Based Deep Equilibrium Approach for Binary Vulnerability Detection
topic Cryptography and Security
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2404.08562