arXiv AI

Calibrated Decision Models for Autonomous Penetration-Testing Harnesses: JEV and Laya as System One Decision Layers for LLM-Driven Pentest Agents

The paper proposes using lightweight, calibrated System One decision models—specifically JEV and Laya—to improve autonomous penetration-testing harnesses that rely on large language models (LLMs). It defines four key decision points (finding adjudication, severity recalibration, agent pruning, and confirmation loops) and presents a NeuroSploit case study showing differences in severity distribution, runtime, and grading when using TypeSafe System One. The authors review existing System One specifications, discuss various RL-based training approaches, and introduce Rave, a domain‑adapted model with a proposed training and evaluation framework.

arXiv AI
Jun 11

Are Frontier LLMs Ready for Cybersecurity? Evidence for Vertical Foundation Models from Dual-Mode Vulnerability Benchmarks

arXiv:2605. 23243v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: We evaluate whether frontier LLMs are ready for cybersecurity through a dual-mode benchmark: white-box function-level vulnerability detection (VulnLLM-R, across C/Java/Python) and black-box web application security testing (five production-style applications with 118 ground-truth vulnerabilities across 20+ CWE families, which we will open-source).

By Vivek Dahiya, Sunny Nehra, Vipul Dholariya, Bhavik Shangari, Chandra Khatri
arXiv AI
Jun 12

The Emergence of Autonomous Penetration Capabilities in Large Language Model-Powered AI Systems

arXiv:2606. 13079v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Nowadays, the autonomous execution of cyberattacks capable of causing substantial real-world harm is widely regarded as one of the critical red lines that frontier AI systems must not cross.

By Jiaqi Luo, Jiarun Dai, Zhile Chen, Jia Xu, Weibing Wang, Yawen Duan, Brian Tse, Geng Hong, Xudong Pan, Yuan Zhang, Min Yang
Hugging Face Trending Papers
Jun 24

Decoupling Reconnaissance and Exploitation: Measuring the Capability Boundaries of LLM-Based Web Penetration Testing

Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown promise for automated penetration testing, yet existing end-to-end black-box evaluations are highly susceptible to error cascading: failures in early reconnaissance can mask an agent's actual ability to exploit vulnerabilities. To more accurately characterize these capabilities, we propose a two-stage decoupled evaluation framework that separates exploit execution from reconnaissance.

arXiv AI
Jun 12

Who Pays the Price? Stakeholder-Centric Prompt Injection Benchmarking for Real-world Web Agents

arXiv:2606. 13385v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Web agents driven by large language models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed in real-world environments, where they operate over untrusted web content and execute actions with direct consequences.

By Zihao Wang, Yiming Li, Yutong Wu, Zheyu Liu, Kangjie Chen, Fok Kar Wai, Pin-Yu Chen, Vrizlynn L. L. Thing, Bo Li, Dacheng Tao, Tianwei Zhang