HYDRA: A Hybrid Heuristic-Guided Deep Representation Architecture for Predicting Latent Zero-Day Vulnerabilities in Patched Functions
Software security testing, particularly when enhanced with deep learning models, has become a powerful approach for improving software quality, enabling faster detection of known flaws in source code. However, many approaches miss post-fix latent vulnerabilities that remain even after patches typically due to incomplete fixes or overlooked issues may later lead to zero-day exploits. In this paper, we propose HYDRA, a Hybrid heuristic-guided Deep Representation Architecture for predicting latent zero-day vulnerabilities in patched functions that combines rule-based heuristics with deep representation learning to detect latent risky code patterns that may persist after patches. It integrates static vulnerability rules, GraphCodeBERT embeddings, and a Variational Autoencoder (VAE) to uncover anomalies often missed by symbolic or neural models alone. We evaluate HYDRA in an unsupervised setting on patched functions from three diverse real-world software projects: Chrome, Android, and ImageMagick. Our results show HYDRA predicts 13.7%, 20.6%, and 24% of functions from Chrome, Android, and ImageMagick respectively as containing latent risks, including both heuristic matches and cases without heuristic matches (None) that may lead to zero-day vulnerabilities. It outperforms baseline models that rely solely on regex-derived features or their combination with embeddings, uncovering truly risky code variants that largely align with known heuristic patterns. These results demonstrate HYDRA’s capability to surface hidden, previously undetected risks, advancing software security validation and supporting proactive zero-day vulnerabilities discovery.
Tue 14 AprDisplayed time zone: Brasilia, Distrito Federal, Brazil change
11:00 - 12:30 | Session 6: Testing Around the WorldAST 2026 at Oceania VI Chair(s): Hokeun Kim Arizona State University | ||
11:00 30mTalk | Understanding and Detecting Platform-Specific Violations in Android Auto Apps AST 2026 Pre-print Media Attached | ||
11:30 30mTalk | A Unified Benchmark for Out-of-Distribution Detection for Autonomous Driving Systems AST 2026 Xiangyu Li SeysoAI, Jingyu ZHANG Hong Kong Metropolitan University, Jacky Keung City University of Hong Kong, Xiaoxue Ma Hong Kong Metropolitan University, Yihan Liao City University of Hong Kong Pre-print Media Attached | ||
12:00 30mTalk | HYDRA: A Hybrid Heuristic-Guided Deep Representation Architecture for Predicting Latent Zero-Day Vulnerabilities in Patched Functions AST 2026 Mohammad Farhad University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Sabbir Rahman University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Shuvalaxmi Dass University of Louisiana at Lafayette Pre-print Media Attached | ||