The proliferation of software vulnerabilities presents a significant
challenge to cybersecurity, necessitating more effective detection
methodologies. We introduce White-Basilisk, a novel approach to vulnerability
detection that demonstrates superior performance while challenging prevailing
assumptions in AI model scaling. Utilizing an innovative architecture that
integrates Mamba layers, linear self-attention, and a Mixture of Experts
framework, White-Basilisk achieves state-of-the-art results in vulnerability
detection tasks with a parameter count of only 200M. The model's capacity to
process sequences of unprecedented length enables comprehensive analysis of
extensive codebases in a single pass, surpassing the context limitations of
current Large Language Models (LLMs). White-Basilisk exhibits robust
performance on imbalanced, real-world datasets, while maintaining computational
efficiency that facilitates deployment across diverse organizational scales.
This research not only establishes new benchmarks in code security but also
provides empirical evidence that compact, efficiently designed models can
outperform larger counterparts in specialized tasks, potentially redefining
optimization strategies in AI development for domain-specific applications.