My Scanner Missed 93% of the Bugs — and That Was the Right First Result
A developer found that their vulnerability scanner initially missed 93% of bugs in a benchmark test, but this was intentional and beneficial for improving accuracy.
- A vulnerability scanner intentionally missed 93% of bugs in its first benchmark run to prioritize precision over recall.
- The strategy aimed to reduce false positives, which are costly and time-consuming to investigate.
- The approach focused on building trust in the tool by refining detection logic over time.
- The developer argued that catching every bug immediately is less valuable than reporting only high-confidence issues.
A developer shared an experiment where their vulnerability scanner initially missed 93% of bugs in an industry-standard benchmark. Rather than being a failure, this was a deliberate strategy to prioritize precision over recall in early scans. The approach aimed to reduce false positives, which are costly and time-consuming to investigate. By starting with a conservative scan, the tool could refine its detection logic over time, ultimately improving its reliability for real-world use. The developer emphasized that the goal was not to catch every bug immediately but to build a system that could be trusted to report only high-confidence issues, thereby saving developers time and effort in the long run.
Highlights the importance of balancing precision and recall in security tools to avoid overwhelming developers with false positives.
Challenges the assumption that missing bugs is always a failure, showing that strategic trade-offs can improve long-term effectiveness.
- false positives
- Security alerts that incorrectly identify a vulnerability where none exists.
- precision
- The ratio of true positives to all reported positives in a detection system.
- recall
- The ratio of true positives to all actual positives in a detection system.
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