Research

Baleegh Ahmad, Shailja Thakur, Benjamin Tan, Ramesh Karri, Hammond Pearce

arxiv

In this work, we investigate the ability of Large Language Models to fix security related bugs in Verilog. We also present a complete framework that identifies bugs using static analysis and suggests repairs using Large Language Models.

Baleegh Ahmad,  Wei-Kai Liu, Luca Collini, Hammond Pearce, Jason M. Fung, Jonathan Valamehr, Mohammad Bidmeshki, Piotr Sapiecha, Steve Brown, Krishnendu Chakrabarty, Ramesh Karri, Benjamin Tan.

IEEE/ACM ICCAD, 2022

In this work, we investigate the practical implications and feasibility of producing a set of security-specific scanners that operate on Verilog source files. The scanners indicate parts of code that might contain one of a set of MITRE’s common weakness enumerations (CWEs). 

Hammond Pearce, Baleegh Ahmad, Benjamin Tan, Brendan Dolan-Gavitt, Ramesh Karri.

IEEE Security and Privacy, 2022

(Won Most Distinguished Paper Award)

 In this work, we systematically investigate the prevalence and conditions that can cause GitHub Copilot to recommend insecure code. To perform this analysis we prompt Copilot to generate code in scenarios relevant to high-risk cybersecurity weaknesses, e.g. those from MITRE’s “Top 25” Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) list. We explore Copilot’s performance on three distinct code generation axes—examining how it performs given diversity of weaknesses, diversity of prompts, and diversity of domains.

Hammond Pearce, Benjamin Tan, Baleegh Ahmad, Ramesh Karri, Brendan Dolan-Gavitt.

IEEE Security and Privacy, 2023

In this work, we examine the use of large language models (LLMs) for code (such as OpenAI’s Codex and AI21’s Jurassic J-1) for zero-shot vulnerability repair. We investigate challenges in the design of prompts that coax LLMs into generating repaired versions of insecure code.

Shailja Thakur, Baleegh Ahmad, Zhenxing Fan, Hammond Pearce, Benjamin Tan, Ramesh Karri, Brendan Dolan-Gavitt, Siddharth Garg.

Design and Test in Europe, 2023

(Nominated for Best Paper)

In this paper, we characterize the ability of LLMs to generate useful Verilog. For this, we fine-tune pre-trained LLMs on Verilog datasets collected from GitHub and Verilog textbooks. We construct an evaluation framework comprising test-benches for functional analysis and a flow to test the syntax of Verilog code generated in response to problems of varying difficulty.

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