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Security-by-Design for LLM-Based Code Generation (arxiv.org)
2 points by abeppu 190 days ago | hide | past | pdf | 1 comment on HN

In plain words: Code-writing AI models often recognize security flaws even as they write vulnerable code. A new tool nudges the model's inner signals toward safe, working code while it writes, beating the best existing fixes on secure coding tests.

Abstract · Security-by-Design for LLM-Based Code Generation: Leveraging Internal Representations for Concept-Driven Steering Mechanisms

Large Language Models (LLMs) show remarkable capabilities in understanding natural language and generating complex code. However, as practitioners adopt CodeLLMs for increasingly critical development tasks, research reveals that these models frequently generate functionally correct yet insecure code, posing significant security risks. While multiple approaches have been proposed to improve security in AI-based code generation, combined benchmarks show these methods remain insufficient for practical use, achieving only limited improvements in both functional correctness and security. This stems from a fundamental gap in understanding the internal mechanisms of code generation and the root causes of security vulnerabilities, forcing researchers to rely on heuristics and empirical observations. In this work, we investigate the internal representation of security concepts in CodeLLMs, revealing that models are often aware of vulnerabilities as they generate insecure code. Through systematic evaluation, we demonstrate that CodeLLMs can distinguish between security subconcepts, enabling a more fine-grained analysis than prior black-box approaches. Leveraging these insights, we propose Secure Concept Steering for CodeLLMs (SCS-Code). During token generation, SCS-Code steers LLMs' internal representations toward secure and functional code output, enabling a lightweight and modular mechanism that can be integrated into existing code models. Our approach achieves superior performance compared to state-of-the-art methods across multiple secure coding benchmarks.

Maximilian Wendlinger, Daniel Kowatsch, Konstantin Böttinger, Philip Sperl
arXiv:2603.11212 · cs.CR, cs.LG · submitted Mar 11, 2026
abstract · pdf · html · to be published in the IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy (EuroS&P)'26

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This paper describes finding security related concepts and using them to steer at generation time. While this is an interesting contribution on its own, the approach could also be applied to a range of other concerns -- e.g. can we use this to steer away from performance problems? can we make llm code generation anticipate maintainability or readability issues?