A Preliminary Study of Large Language Models for Multilingual Vulnerability Detection

Abstract: Deep learning-based approaches, particularly those leveraging pre-trained LLMs (PLMs), have shown promise in automated software vulnerability detection. However, existing methods are predominantly limited to specific programming languages, restricting their applicability in multilingual settings. Recent advancements in LLMs offer language-agnostic capabilities and enhanced semantic understanding, presenting a potential solution to this limitation. While existing studies have explored LLMs for vulnerability detection, their detection performance remains unknown for multilingual vulnerabilities. To address this gap, we conducted a preliminary study to evaluate the effectiveness of PLMs and state-of-the-art LLMs across seven popular programming languages. Our findings reveal that the PLM CodeT5P achieves the best performance in multilingual vulnerability detection, particularly in identifying the most critical vulnerabilities. Based on these results, we further discuss the potential of LLMs in advancing real-world multilingual vulnerability detection. This work represents an initial step toward exploring PLMs and LLMs for cross-language vulnerability detection, offering key insights for future research and practical deployment.