APPATCH: Automated Adaptive Prompting Large Language Models for Real-World Software Vulnerability Patching

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Nong, Yu, Yang, Haoran, Cheng, Long, Hu, Hongxin, Cai, Haipeng
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Nong, Yu
Yang, Haoran
Cheng, Long
Hu, Hongxin
Cai, Haipeng
author_facet Nong, Yu
Yang, Haoran
Cheng, Long
Hu, Hongxin
Cai, Haipeng
contents Timely and effective vulnerability patching is essential for cybersecurity defense, for which various approaches have been proposed yet still struggle to generate valid and correct patches for real-world vulnerabilities. In this paper, we leverage the power and merits of pre-trained language language models (LLMs) to enable automated vulnerability patching using no test input/exploit evidence and without model training/fine-tuning. To elicit LLMs to effectively reason about vulnerable code behaviors, which is essential for quality patch generation, we introduce vulnerability semantics reasoning and adaptive prompting on LLMs and instantiate the methodology as APPATCH, an automated LLM-based patching system. Our evaluation of APPATCH on 97 zero-day vulnerabilities and 20 existing vulnerabilities demonstrates its superior performance to both existing prompting methods and state-of-the-art non-LLM-based techniques (by up to 28.33% in F1 and 182.26% in recall over the best baseline). Through APPATCH, we demonstrate what helps for LLM-based patching and how, as well as discussing what still lacks and why.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2408_13597
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle APPATCH: Automated Adaptive Prompting Large Language Models for Real-World Software Vulnerability Patching
Nong, Yu
Yang, Haoran
Cheng, Long
Hu, Hongxin
Cai, Haipeng
Cryptography and Security
Software Engineering
Timely and effective vulnerability patching is essential for cybersecurity defense, for which various approaches have been proposed yet still struggle to generate valid and correct patches for real-world vulnerabilities. In this paper, we leverage the power and merits of pre-trained language language models (LLMs) to enable automated vulnerability patching using no test input/exploit evidence and without model training/fine-tuning. To elicit LLMs to effectively reason about vulnerable code behaviors, which is essential for quality patch generation, we introduce vulnerability semantics reasoning and adaptive prompting on LLMs and instantiate the methodology as APPATCH, an automated LLM-based patching system. Our evaluation of APPATCH on 97 zero-day vulnerabilities and 20 existing vulnerabilities demonstrates its superior performance to both existing prompting methods and state-of-the-art non-LLM-based techniques (by up to 28.33% in F1 and 182.26% in recall over the best baseline). Through APPATCH, we demonstrate what helps for LLM-based patching and how, as well as discussing what still lacks and why.
title APPATCH: Automated Adaptive Prompting Large Language Models for Real-World Software Vulnerability Patching
topic Cryptography and Security
Software Engineering
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.13597