SCARA: A Semantics-Constrained Autonomous Remediation Agent for Opaque Industrial Software Vulnerabilities

Computer Science > Cryptography and Security [Submitted on 19 May 2026] SCARA: A Semantics-Constrained Autonomous Remediation Agent for Opaque Industrial Software Vulnerabilities Bowei Ning, Xuejun Zong, Lian Lian, Kan He, Guogang Wang, Yifei Sun, Jinyang Liu Critical-infrastructure operators are increasingly expected to assess and remediate vulnerabilities in deployed industrial software. However, much of this software exists as opaque industrial software (OIS), including stripped firmware, proprietary protocol handlers, and compiled control logic without source code, symbols, build environments, or hardware interfaces. While binary analysis can identify vulnerability candidates, existing automated repair systems largely rely on source code, compilable artifacts, sanitizer feedback, or instrumentable builds, leaving a gap between binary-level discovery and validated remediation. This paper presents SCARA, a Semantics-Constrained Autonomous Remediation Agent for OIS. SCARA operates under a source-unavailable defender model and connects upstream binary vulnerability candidates to conditionally validated remedies through a four-stage pipeline. Operational-state-aware verification (OSVA) filters infeasible candidates using a nine-component industrial state model; remediation synthesis (RSA) selects the strongest available remedy across protocol mitigation, binary hardening, and SSCKG-constrained source patches; and correctness validation (CVA) provides conditional correctness evidence via behavioral-coverage preservation, independent replay, and typed rejection feedback. On OIS-RemedBench, a 15-case benchmark spanning firmware, protocol handlers, and ICS/PLC artifacts, SCARA achieves observed 100% precision with no false positives, refutes 20.0% of cases as operationally infeasible, and reaches 88.9% remediation success after targeted reruns. To our knowledge, SCARA is the first end-to-end framework that connects binary vulnerability candidates to conditionally validated remediation for opaque industrial software. Subjects: Cryptography and Security (cs.CR); Software Engineering (cs.SE) MSC classes: 68N30, 68T07 ACM classes: D.2.7; K.6.5 Cite as: arXiv:2605.19668 [cs.CR]   (or arXiv:2605.19668v1 [cs.CR] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2605.19668 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Bowei Ning [view email] [v1] Tue, 19 May 2026 11:00:34 UTC (8,586 KB) Access Paper: HTML (experimental) view license Current browse context: cs.CR < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-05 Change to browse by: cs cs.SE References & Citations NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)