File size: 2,021 Bytes
8df6aa0 | 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 | # Ethical Considerations
AppSecBench intentionally contains **vulnerable code**. This document explains how the data is
constructed and the safeguards around its release.
## What the data is
- **Synthetic and minimal.** Every vulnerable snippet isolates one weakness in a few lines. It is
not extracted from, and does not reproduce, any real application, product, or copyrighted source.
- **Non-weaponized.** Exploit sketches are illustrative proof-of-concept patterns (e.g. a sample
malicious URL or payload shape), not turnkey exploits, tooling, or targeting information.
- **Educational framing.** Each record pairs the vulnerable code with secure code, an explanation,
and references to authoritative guidance (OWASP, CWE, ASVS).
## Why release it
The security community needs open, reproducible benchmarks to (a) measure and improve LLM secure-
code capability, (b) benchmark SAST/secret-scanning/IaC-scanning tools on equal footing, and
(c) support defensive academic research. Withholding such data would cede evaluation to opaque,
closed benchmarks.
## Safeguards
- The dataset is MIT-licensed for **defensive** use (research, education, tool evaluation, training).
- AI/LLM cases (prompt injection, RAG, MCP, agent security) demonstrate *defensive* controls, not
attack tooling.
- Infrastructure cases show misconfiguration **and** the corrected, hardened configuration side by
side.
- The dataset does **not** contain working exploits against third parties, credential material
beyond obvious placeholders (`sk_live_9f8a...`), or instructions for unauthorized access.
## Responsible use
- Do not use the vulnerable snippets to attack systems you are not authorized to test.
- When training models, ensure the secure-code pairs are presented with their explanations so the
model learns *remediation*, not mere vulnerability replication.
- Cite the dataset and link to this document when publishing results.
## Contact
Report concerns via the repository's SECURITY.md disclosure process.
|