The Cheapest, Fastest Model Is the Best Security Reviewer. I Tested 8 to Find Out.

This is a submission for the Kaggle Benchmarking Challenge I built a 38-case security vulnerability detection benchmark on Kaggle that tests whether LLMs can identify vulnerabilities in Python code with deliberate false-positive traps designed to distinguish data-flow reasoning from pattern matching. The itch came from studying for CEH v13. Every week, another "AI security assistant" launches claiming to replace human code review. I wanted to know: do LLMs actually reason about security, or do they just recognize recognizable shapes? Most security benchmarks test textbook cases.