Hybrid Vulnerability Discovery in the Wild: Automated Screening, Fine-Tuned LLMs, and Four Published CVEs

Automated security scanners produce many alerts, but disclosure requires evidence of attacker control, reachability, impact, and reproducibility. We present an evidence-gated workflow that screens recently updated Python AI/ML and data-science packages then uses two separately fine-tuned open-weight agents to distinguish vulnerability plausibility from CVE worthiness: the first tests attacker control and reachability, and the second assesses novelty and impact before human proof-of-concept validation and coordinated disclosure. In a targeted campaign covering 400 packages, screening yielded 1292 clustered signals; the agents retained 96 vulnerability hypotheses, including 65 provisional CVE candidates. All 13 Critical or High candidates were reproduced with benign proofs of concept and acknowledged by a CVE Numbering Authority as valid security findings. As of 30 September 2026, four had published CVEs affecting OpenMed, Python StateMachine, uproot, and SpeechBrain; five had maintainer-acknowledged patches in progress; and four awaited maintainer response. Field detection accuracy was not measured.

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Publication Details

Journal
Electronics
Published
2026-10-14
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/electronics15204727
Primary Topic
Web Application Security Vulnerabilities
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
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article

Hybrid Vulnerability Discovery in the Wild: Automated Screening, Fine-Tuned LLMs, and Four Published CVEs

Lior Shamir, Sai Teja Erukude
Electronics
Web Application Security Vulnerabilities
article

Hybrid Vulnerability Discovery in the Wild: Automated Screening, Fine-Tuned LLMs, and Four Published CVEs

Lior Shamir, Sai Teja Erukude
article en

Abstract

Automated security scanners produce many alerts, but disclosure requires evidence of attacker control, reachability, impact, and reproducibility. We present an evidence-gated workflow that screens recently updated Python AI/ML and data-science packages then uses two separately fine-tuned open-weight agents to distinguish vulnerability plausibility from CVE worthiness: the first tests attacker control and reachability, and the second assesses novelty and impact before human proof-of-concept validation and coordinated disclosure. In a targeted campaign covering 400 packages, screening yielded 1292 clustered signals; the agents retained 96 vulnerability hypotheses, including 65 provisional CVE candidates. All 13 Critical or High candidates were reproduced with benign proofs of concept and acknowledged by a CVE Numbering Authority as valid security findings. As of 30 September 2026, four had published CVEs affecting OpenMed, Python StateMachine, uproot, and SpeechBrain; five had maintainer-acknowledged patches in progress; and four awaited maintainer response. Field detection accuracy was not measured.

ElectronicsVol. 15(20)
Kansas State University (US)
Openalex Percentile: Top 6%
Web Application Security Vulnerabilities
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