Definition
Vulnerability localization is the task of finding where a known vulnerability (CWE/advisory description) lives inside a real codebase — typically returning ranked likely files — distinct from discovering novel zero-days.
Key Points
- 2026-07-21: cisco cisco-antares SLMs + vloc-bench (500 tasks) target agentic repo navigation for known-vuln localization (2026-07-23-cisco-antares-open-weight-vuln-localization)
- Requires iterative search (shell/read/narrow) more than one-shot code Q&A
- Local/on-prem models reduce need to send sensitive repos to frontier APIs
- Dual-use risk: localization tools can aid attackers; gated releases common
Related
- vulnerability-detection
- application-security
- ai-security
- open-weight-models
- small-language-models
- cisco-antares
- secure-coding