ProtoArena is a new black-box benchmark that tests AI agents on 80 cross‑component vulnerability‑exploitation environments across 11 protocol and application domains and 7 attack categories. It evaluates agents at three information levels—guided reproduction, exploitation with context, and effect‑directed black‑box exploration—using a hybrid verifier that combines rule‑based checks with LLM review of traffic and logs. In experiments, Claude Opus 4.8 achieved the highest success rates, reaching 48.8% under guided conditions and 12.5% in effect‑directed black‑box scenarios, while also demonstrating significant DNSBomb optimization performance.
By Fasheng Miao, Zhaoyu Hu, Xiang Li, Changqing An, Jiutian Zeng, Longtao Huang, Haixin Duan, Jilong Wang
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: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
arXiv:2606. 14295v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Frontier AI systems are increasingly capable of cybersecurity tasks, including codebase inspection, vulnerability detection, and exploitation.
By Fengyu Liu, Jiarun Dai, Yihe Fan, Wuyuao Mai, Ziao Li, Bofei Chen, Jie Zhang, Zheng Lou, Bocheng Xiang, Qiyi Zhang, Xudong Pan, Geng Hong, Yuan Zhang, Min Yang
arXiv:2606. 30555v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: The rapid integration of Large Language Models (LLMs) has driven the evolution of Multi-Agent Systems (MAS), where specialized agents collaborate to execute complex workflows.
By Dvir Alsheich, Adar Peleg, Ben Hagag, Rom Himelstein, Amit Levi, Avi Mendelson
arXiv:2508.14925v2 Announce Type: replace-cross
Abstract: By providing a standardized interface for LLM agents to interact with external tools, the Model Context Protocol (MCP) is quickly becoming a...
By Zhiqiang Wang, Yichao Gao, Yanting Wang, Suyuan Liu, Haifeng Sun, Haoran Cheng, Guanquan Shi, Haohua Du, Xiangyang Li
arXiv:2607. 25379v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Cyber-capable AI agents combine language models with tools, memory, and execution en- vironments to perform multi-step offensive-security tasks.
By Abu Bakar Siddik
arXiv:2607. 26791v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large Language Model (LLM) agents are increasingly adopted in real-world security operations with access to host artifacts and command-line interfaces (CLIs), making it critical to thoroughly assess their security capabilities.
By Lehan Wang, Boli Chen, Ruixue Ding, Pengjun Xie, Jinwei Huang, Zhendong Liu, Shuo Wang, Tao Lei, Xin Ouyang, Xiaomeng Li
arXiv:2606. 02240v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Indirect prompt injection in tool-use agents is a concrete production threat: LLM agents read from integrations (third-party services such as Gmail, Salesforce, or Jira accessed through tool calls) whose response content the user neither writes nor controls.
By Hiskias Dingeto, Will Leeney
AgentXploit is a two‑role auditing system that separates repository‑level attack‑path discovery from runtime exploitation for AI agents. The Analyzer Agent traces attacker‑controlled inputs to sensitive operations and records candidate attack paths, while the Exploiter Agent turns these paths into concrete attacks and refines them using runtime feedback. The system is evaluated on AgentXploit‑Bench, a benchmark of 72 reproducible vulnerabilities across 12 open‑source AI‑agent systems, achieving 59.3% end‑to‑end success compared to 38.4% for Codex, and 79.2% attack success on AgentDojo versus 52.7% for AgentVigil.
By Weida Liang, Shi Qiu, Zhun Wang, Simon Sure, Xiaoyuan Liu, Tianneng Shi, Zhaorun Chen, Wenbo Guo, Dawn Song
arXiv:2606. 10749v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language model (LLM) agents are rapidly moving from conversational interfaces to software components that plan, invoke tools, maintain memory, and act on external environments.
By Yuchen Ling, Shengcheng Yu, Zhenyu Chen, Chunrong Fang
arXiv:2606. 30755v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Claw-like AI agents (e.
By Peizhi Niu, Wenjie Qu, Shangding Gu, Tianneng Shi, Yuankai Li, Ahmad Tawaha, Hend Alzahrani, Vincent Siu, Boyi Li, Chenguang Wang, Jiaheng Zhang, Basel Alomair, Ming Jin, Muhao Chen, Chi Wang, Costas Spanos, Dawn Song