Abstract:Software vulnerabilities are known as security defects of computer software systems, and they threaten the completeness, security, and reliability of modern software and application data. Artificial vulnerability management is time-consuming and error-prone. Therefore, in order to better deal with the challenges of vulnerability management, researchers have proposed a variety of automated vulnerability management schemes, among which automated vulnerability repair has attracted wide attention from researchers recently. Automated vulnerability repair consists of three main functions: vulnerability cause localization, patch generation, and patch validation, and it aims to assist developers to repair vulnerabilities. The existing work lacks systematic classification and discussion of vulnerability repair technology. To this end, this study gives a comprehensive insight into the theory, practice, applicable scenarios, advantages, and disadvantages of existing vulnerability repair methods and technologies and writes a research review of automated vulnerability repair technologies, so as to promote the development of vulnerability repair technologies and deepen researchers’ cognition and understanding of vulnerability repair problems. The main contents of the study include: (1) sorting out and summarizing the repair methods of specific and general vulnerabilities according to different vulnerability types; (2) classifying and summarizing different repair methods based on technical principles; (3) summarizing the main challenges of vulnerability repair; (4) looking into future development direction of vulnerability repair.