---
license: gpl-2.0
task_categories:
  - text-classification
language:
  - en
tags:
  - code
  - security
  - vulnerability-detection
  - linux-kernel
  - git-commits
size_categories:
  - 1M<n<10M
---

# Linux Kernel Vulnerability-Introducing Commits Dataset

## Dataset Description

A labeled dataset of **1,426,202 Linux kernel git commits** with full metadata, diffs, and binary labels indicating whether each commit introduced a vulnerability that was later fixed.

**Intended use:** Training and evaluating models for vulnerability-introducing commit detection — predicting whether a given code change will later require a security or bug fix.

## How the Data Was Collected

1. **Repository:** The full Linux kernel git history was cloned from `git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git` (all branches and tags, complete history).

2. **Metadata extraction:** A single `git log --all` pass extracted structured metadata for every reachable commit (1,426,202 total), including author/committer info, dates, and the full commit message parsed into subject, body, and trailers.

3. **Diff extraction:** A single `git log --all -p --numstat` pass extracted the complete unified diff and per-file insertion/deletion counts for every commit.

4. **Labeling via Fixes tag mining:** The `vuln_commits_full.csv` dataset maps fixing commits to the commits they fix, identified through the kernel's `Fixes:` trailer convention. Each commit whose abbreviated hash appears as an `introducing_commit` in that mapping receives `label=1`; all others receive `label=0`.

5. **Stratified splitting:** The dataset was split 80/10/10 into train/validation/test with stratified sampling (seed=42) to preserve the label distribution across splits.

## Column Descriptions

| Column | Type | Description |
|--------|------|-------------|
| `hash` | string | Full 40-character commit SHA-1 |
| `abbreviated_hash` | string | Short commit hash (typically 12 characters) |
| `parent_hashes` | string | Space-separated full hashes of parent commits |
| `parent_count` | int32 | Number of parent commits (0=root, 1=normal, 2+=merge) |
| `author_name` | string | Original author's name |
| `author_email` | string | Original author's email |
| `author_date` | string | Author timestamp in strict ISO 8601 format |
| `committer_name` | string | Committer's name (person who applied the patch) |
| `committer_email` | string | Committer's email |
| `committer_date` | string | Committer timestamp in strict ISO 8601 format |
| `subject` | string | First line of the commit message |
| `body` | string | Commit message text between subject and trailers |
| `trailers` | string | Structured trailer lines (Signed-off-by, Fixes, Reviewed-by, Cc, Link, etc.) joined by newlines |
| `diff_raw` | large_string | Complete unified diff output (diff headers, hunks, context lines, etc.) |
| `insertions` | int64 | Total lines added across all files (from numstat) |
| `deletions` | int64 | Total lines removed across all files (from numstat) |
| `files_changed` | int32 | Number of files modified |
| `label` | int8 | 1 = vulnerability-introducing commit, 0 = clean |

## Split Sizes and Label Distribution

| Split | Rows | Label=1 | Label=0 | Positive % |
|-------|------|---------|---------|------------|
| train | 1,140,962 | 64,002 | 1,076,960 | 5.61% |
| validation | 142,620 | 8,000 | 134,620 | 5.61% |
| test | 142,620 | 8,000 | 134,620 | 5.61% |
| **total** | **1,426,202** | **80,002** | **1,346,200** | **5.61%** |

## Known Limitations

1. **Fixes tags capture all bugs, not just security vulnerabilities.** The kernel's `Fixes:` trailer is used for all bug fixes — logic errors, performance regressions, build failures, and similar — not exclusively for security-critical vulnerabilities. The label therefore reflects "introduced a defect that was later fixed" rather than "introduced a security vulnerability" specifically.

2. **Label noise from catch-all hashes.** Some `Fixes:` tags point to very early commits (e.g., `1da177e4c3f4` — the initial Linux 2.6.12-rc2 import) when the actual introducing commit is unknown or predates git history. These commits receive `label=1` despite not being the true root cause.

3. **Right-censoring of recent commits.** Commits near the HEAD of the repository have had less time to be identified as bug-introducing. Some recent `label=0` commits may in fact contain undiscovered bugs, introducing a systematic false-negative bias toward the end of the timeline.

4. **Merge commits have empty diffs.** By default, `git log -p` does not produce diffs for merge commits. Of the 80,002 label=1 commits, 155 (0.19%) are merges with empty `diff_raw`. These should be excluded or handled specially in modeling.

5. **Feature distribution skew.** Label=1 commits tend to be larger than label=0 commits (mean diff length 3.8x, mean insertions 8.3x). Models may learn to use commit size as a shortcut rather than understanding code semantics. Consider controlling for commit size in evaluation.

6. **Single-project bias.** All data comes from one project (the Linux kernel). Models trained on this data may not generalize to other codebases with different coding conventions, review processes, or commit practices.

7. **Incomplete Fixes tag coverage.** Not all bug-fixing commits in the kernel carry a `Fixes:` trailer. The labeled set of introducing commits is therefore a lower bound — the true number of bug-introducing commits is likely higher, meaning some `label=0` commits are mislabeled.

## Citation

If you use this dataset, please cite:

```bibtex
@misc{linux_vuln_commits_2026,
  title={Linux Kernel Vulnerability-Introducing Commits Dataset},
  year={2026},
  note={Derived from the Linux kernel git history and Fixes-tag mining},
  url={https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git}
}
```

## License

The Linux kernel is licensed under **GPL-2.0**. Commit metadata and diffs are derived from the kernel source repository and are distributed under the same license.