COMBINED APPROACHES TO THE STATIC CODE ANALYSIS USING NEURAL NETWORKS

This article presents an overview of possible approaches to the application of neural networks in the process of static code analysis. It explores the current state of affairs in existing approaches to improving program analysis using machine learning methods, including postprocessing of static analysis alerts, preprocessing of source code, or direct use of machine learning for analyzing source code. Additionally, the article examines the main directions for applying approaches from each category. Both classical approaches and machine learning methods in program analysis possess distinct strengths and weaknesses that should be considered when implementing them in practice. One of the main theses of this research is that understanding the capabilities of combining these approaches, leveraging the flexibility offered by neural networks while maintaining a sufficient level of reliability provided by classical algorithms, is crucial for building a high-quality system. This article covers the following three basic directions of the application of neural networks for the static source code analysis. The first direction is a specification tuning: a refinement of specifications produced by a ‘classic’ static code analyzer (a removal, clustering, ranking of warnings or just assistance in manual warning analysis, etc.). The second direction is a specification inference, to find specifications hidden in code (feature extraction, selection, or code transformation retaining its behaviour, e.g. to make it more suitable for the ‘classic’ static analysis tools). The third way is a black box analysis to discover and fix code defects (syntactic, semantic ones or vulnerabilities), to assist in manual code checking, to format the code automatically or to find code smells (in this direction only a machine learning model is used, its training is performed on the source code directly). The article outlines directions for the future research which will focus on the development and combining of the approaches covered here.