Most software is riddled with bugs, which AI can now easily find and exploit. The standard defenses against cyberattacks are no longer sufficient: we need ways to prove that code is free of bugs. Formal software verification could provide this guarantee, but it has historically required years of expert effort, making it impractical for most real-world projects. In a collaboration with Theorem, however, we show this is no longer the case: LLMs can now produce formal proofs at large scale, enabling new software development workflows that include proven security guarantees. Using Claude, we proved security properties at the assembly code level (RISC-V) in over 100 real-world open-source software libraries. To our knowledge, this represents the first large-scale effort to use AI to apply formal verification to production software at the assembly code level. While writing the proofs, Claude also discovered bugs that had eluded detection for years, despite trillions of test runs. As model capabilities continue to improve, we expect formal verification to become an essential part of secure software development.
LLMs are making formal software verification feasible at a much larger scale
Claude formally proved security properties in the compiled code of 123 open-source libraries. Along the way, it found bugs that had eluded detection for years.

Key takeaways
LLMs enable large-scale formal software verification, proving code security and finding hidden bugs in real-world software.
- LLMs can generate formal proofs at scale, making software verification more feasible.
- Claude discovered bugs in open-source libraries that had gone undetected for years.
- Formal verification could become essential for secure software development as AI improves.
Summarised automatically by AI from the original article by Hacker News. AI can make mistakes, so check the original for details.
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