HexaCoder: Secure Code Generation via Oracle-Guided Synthetic Training Data

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Hauptverfasser: Hajipour, Hossein, Schönherr, Lea, Holz, Thorsten, Fritz, Mario
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Hajipour, Hossein
Schönherr, Lea
Holz, Thorsten
Fritz, Mario
author_facet Hajipour, Hossein
Schönherr, Lea
Holz, Thorsten
Fritz, Mario
contents Large language models (LLMs) have shown great potential for automatic code generation and form the basis for various tools such as GitHub Copilot. However, recent studies highlight that many LLM-generated code contains serious security vulnerabilities. While previous work tries to address this by training models that generate secure code, these attempts remain constrained by limited access to training data and labor-intensive data preparation. In this paper, we introduce HexaCoder, a novel approach to enhance the ability of LLMs to generate secure codes by automatically synthesizing secure codes, which reduces the effort of finding suitable training data. HexaCoder comprises two key components: an oracle-guided data synthesis pipeline and a two-step process for secure code generation. The data synthesis pipeline generates pairs of vulnerable and fixed codes for specific Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) types by utilizing a state-of-the-art LLM for repairing vulnerable code. A security oracle identifies vulnerabilities, and a state-of-the-art LLM repairs them by extending and/or editing the codes, creating data pairs for fine-tuning using the Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA) method. Each example of our fine-tuning dataset includes the necessary security-related libraries and code that form the basis of our novel two-step generation approach. This allows the model to integrate security-relevant libraries before generating the main code, significantly reducing the number of generated vulnerable codes by up to 85% compared to the baseline methods. We perform extensive evaluations on three different benchmarks for four LLMs, demonstrating that HexaCoder not only improves the security of the generated code but also maintains a high level of functional correctness.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2409_06446
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle HexaCoder: Secure Code Generation via Oracle-Guided Synthetic Training Data
Hajipour, Hossein
Schönherr, Lea
Holz, Thorsten
Fritz, Mario
Cryptography and Security
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
Machine Learning
Software Engineering
Large language models (LLMs) have shown great potential for automatic code generation and form the basis for various tools such as GitHub Copilot. However, recent studies highlight that many LLM-generated code contains serious security vulnerabilities. While previous work tries to address this by training models that generate secure code, these attempts remain constrained by limited access to training data and labor-intensive data preparation. In this paper, we introduce HexaCoder, a novel approach to enhance the ability of LLMs to generate secure codes by automatically synthesizing secure codes, which reduces the effort of finding suitable training data. HexaCoder comprises two key components: an oracle-guided data synthesis pipeline and a two-step process for secure code generation. The data synthesis pipeline generates pairs of vulnerable and fixed codes for specific Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) types by utilizing a state-of-the-art LLM for repairing vulnerable code. A security oracle identifies vulnerabilities, and a state-of-the-art LLM repairs them by extending and/or editing the codes, creating data pairs for fine-tuning using the Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA) method. Each example of our fine-tuning dataset includes the necessary security-related libraries and code that form the basis of our novel two-step generation approach. This allows the model to integrate security-relevant libraries before generating the main code, significantly reducing the number of generated vulnerable codes by up to 85% compared to the baseline methods. We perform extensive evaluations on three different benchmarks for four LLMs, demonstrating that HexaCoder not only improves the security of the generated code but also maintains a high level of functional correctness.
title HexaCoder: Secure Code Generation via Oracle-Guided Synthetic Training Data
topic Cryptography and Security
Artificial Intelligence
Computation and Language
Machine Learning
Software Engineering
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.06446