An Extended Study on Tools for Identifying Software Vulnerabilities
Publish date: 2026-01-16
Report number: FOI-R--5790--SE
Pages: 78
Written in: Swedish
Keywords:
- software vulnerabilites
- cybersecurity
- fuzzing
- data flow analysis
Abstract
The report presents an extended analysis of tools that identify software vulnerabilities and that have been scientifically published during the period 2014-2024. Ofthe 273 tools described in the literature, 27 are assessed as particularly relevant: either they exhibited a high level of technological maturity at the time of their original publication, or they have continued to evolve in ways that increase their practical applicability. The results show that the tools which have undergone further development primarily rely on fuzzing, data-flow analysis, and symbolic execution, often in hybrid form. Several tools have discovered previously unknown vulnerabilities in production software, many of which have been assigned CVE identifiers. The study also highlights clear dependencies within the research field, where a small number of research groups account for a substantial share of the tools. While the dominant target systems are C/C++ and embedded systems, the tools also cover Java, Android, Rust, and systems requiring complex input formats.