LLMs reflect users' privacy preferences in access control decisions with up to 86% agreement and can promote safer behavior, but personalization trades off higher individual match for potentially less secure results when users over-permission.
Can LLMs Find Bugs in Code? An Evaluation from Beginner Errors to Security Vulnerabilities in Python and C++
2 Pith papers cite this work. Polarity classification is still indexing.
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abstract
Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT-4, Claude 3, and LLaMA 4 are increasingly embedded in software/application development, supporting tasks from code generation to debugging. Yet, their real-world effectiveness in detecting diverse software bugs, particularly complex, security-relevant vulnerabilities, remains underexplored. This study presents a systematic, empirical evaluation of these three leading LLMs using a benchmark of foundational programming errors, classic security flaws, and advanced, production-grade bugs in C++ and Python. The dataset integrates real code from SEED Labs, OpenSSL (via the Suresoft GLaDOS database), and PyBugHive, validated through local compilation and testing pipelines. A novel multi-stage, context-aware prompting protocol simulates realistic debugging scenarios, while a graded rubric measures detection accuracy, reasoning depth, and remediation quality. Our results show that all models excel at identifying syntactic and semantic issues in well-scoped code, making them promising for educational use and as first-pass reviewers in automated code auditing. Performance diminishes in scenarios involving complex security vulnerabilities and large-scale production code, with ChatGPT-4 and Claude 3 generally providing more nuanced contextual analyses than LLaMA 4. This highlights both the promise and the present constraints of LLMs in serving as reliable code analysis tools.
verdicts
UNVERDICTED 2representative citing papers
Locally deployed LLMs achieve 43-45% accuracy on Python bug detection but frequently produce only partial identifications of problematic code regions.
citing papers explorer
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Can LLMs Make (Personalized) Access Control Decisions?
LLMs reflect users' privacy preferences in access control decisions with up to 86% agreement and can promote safer behavior, but personalization trades off higher individual match for potentially less secure results when users over-permission.
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An Empirical Evaluation of Locally Deployed LLMs for Bug Detection in Python Code
Locally deployed LLMs achieve 43-45% accuracy on Python bug detection but frequently produce only partial identifications of problematic code regions.