The core downside: Context vs. guidelines
Conventional SAST instruments, as we all know, are rule-bound; they examine code, bytecode, or binaries for patterns that match identified safety flaws. Whereas efficient, they typically fail on the subject of contextual understanding, lacking vulnerabilities in complicated logical flaws, multi-file dependencies, or hard-to-track code paths. This hole is why their precision charges and the share of true vulnerabilities amongst all reported findings stay low. In our empirical research, the broadly used SAST software, Semgrep, reported a precision of simply 35.7%.
Our LLM-SAST mashup is designed to bridge this hole. LLMs, pre-trained on huge code datasets, possess sample recognition capabilities for code conduct and a information of dependencies that deterministic guidelines lack. This permits them to purpose concerning the code’s conduct within the context of the encompassing code, related information, and all the code base.
A two-stage pipeline for clever triage
Our framework operates as a two-stage pipeline, leveraging a SAST core (in our case, Semgrep) to determine potential dangers after which feeding that info into an LLM-powered layer for clever evaluation and validation.
