Structure-Enhanced Prompt Learning for Graph-Based Code Vulnerability Detection

Recent advances in prompt learning have opened new avenues for enhancing natural language understanding in domain-specific tasks, including code vulnerability detection. Motivated by the limitations of conventional binary classification methods in capturing complex code semantics, we propose a novel framework that integrates a two-stage prompt optimization mechanism with hierarchical representation learning. Our approach leverages graphon theory to generate task-adaptive, structurally enriched prompts by encoding both contextual and graphical information into trainable vector representations. To further enhance representational capacity, we incorporate the pretrained model CodeBERTScore, a syntax-aware encoder, and Graph Neural Networks, enabling comprehensive modeling of both local syntactic features and global structural dependencies. Experimental results on three public datasets—FFmpeg+Qemu, SVulD and Reveal—demonstrate that our method performs competitively across all benchmarks, achieving accuracy rates of 64.40%, 83.44% and 90.69%, respectively. These results underscore the effectiveness of combining prompt-based learning with graph-based structural modeling, offering a more accurate and robust solution for automated vulnerability detection.

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Publication Details

Journal
Applied Sciences
Published
2025-05-29
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/app15116128
Primary Topic
Software Reliability and Analysis Research
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

Structure-Enhanced Prompt Learning for Graph-Based Code Vulnerability Detection

Chunyang Ye, Hui Zhou, Wei Chang
Applied Sciences
Software Reliability and Analysis Research
article

Structure-Enhanced Prompt Learning for Graph-Based Code Vulnerability Detection

Chunyang Ye, Hui Zhou, Wei Chang
article en

Abstract

Recent advances in prompt learning have opened new avenues for enhancing natural language understanding in domain-specific tasks, including code vulnerability detection. Motivated by the limitations of conventional binary classification methods in capturing complex code semantics, we propose a novel framework that integrates a two-stage prompt optimization mechanism with hierarchical representation learning. Our approach leverages graphon theory to generate task-adaptive, structurally enriched prompts by encoding both contextual and graphical information into trainable vector representations. To further enhance representational capacity, we incorporate the pretrained model CodeBERTScore, a syntax-aware encoder, and Graph Neural Networks, enabling comprehensive modeling of both local syntactic features and global structural dependencies. Experimental results on three public datasets—FFmpeg+Qemu, SVulD and Reveal—demonstrate that our method performs competitively across all benchmarks, achieving accuracy rates of 64.40%, 83.44% and 90.69%, respectively. These results underscore the effectiveness of combining prompt-based learning with graph-based structural modeling, offering a more accurate and robust solution for automated vulnerability detection.

Applied SciencesVol. 15(11)
Hainan University (CN)
National Natural Science Foundation of China, National Key Research and Development Program of China
Openalex Percentile: Top 89%
Software Reliability and Analysis Research
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