arXiv:2607. 14006v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Penetration testing traditionally evaluates whether adversaries can exploit weaknesses in software, infrastructure, configurations, or operational controls to achieve security-relevant compromise.
By Mohammad Allahbakhsh, Mohammad Hassan Bahari, Moslem Attar-Raouf
arXiv:2607. 26998v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language model (LLM) agents automate penetration testing through an observation-action loop, selecting actions based on observations returned by tools.
By Ruoyu Wang, Heng Zhao, Renjie Wu, Mengnan Zhao, Zhixuan Chu, Wanyu Lin, Tianhang Zheng
The paper introduces CTF-ABACUS, a trace-based auditing framework that reconstructs each autonomous language-model agent’s run in Capture-the-Flag (CTF) challenges into evidence‑grounded solve profiles. By decomposing actions into penetration‑testing phases and techniques, it distinguishes genuine exploitation from shortcut methods such as memorized recall or guessing. Applying the framework to 1,435 CTF attempts by six models on 240 challenges shows that only 62‑87% of recovered flags are trace‑verified, highlighting that many successes rely on shallow trajectories rather than true exploitation.
By Kimberly Milner, Minghao Shao, Nanda Rani, Haoran Xi, Venkata Sai Charan Putrevu, Meet Udeshi, Sandeep K. Shukla, Prashanth Krishnamurthy, Farshad Khorrami, Muhammad Shafique, Ramesh Karri
arXiv:2609. 07344v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language model (LLM) based agents are increasingly applied to cybersecurity tasks such as vulnerability discovery and automated penetration testing.
By Weizhe Wang, Yitong Zhang, Yao Zhang, Xiaoqiang Di, Zhigang Li, Bin Wu, Guangquan Xu
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:2605. 11047v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Agentic language-model systems increasingly rely on mutable execution contexts, including files, memory, tools, skills, and auxiliary artifacts, creating security risks beyond explicit user prompts.
By Hongwei Yao, Yiming Liu, Yiling He, Bingrun Yang
arXiv:2608.29596v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Autonomous large language model (LLM) agents increasingly face reliability, context consumption, and execution stability bottlenecks when deployed on c...
By Sanket Badhe, Deep Shah, Priyanka Tiwari, Nehal Kathrotia
arXiv:2601. 21233v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Autonomous code agents built on large language models are reshaping software and AI development through tool use, long-horizon reasoning, and self-directed interaction.
By Xiang Zheng, Yutao Wu, Hanxun Huang, Yige Li, Xingjun Ma, Bo Li, Yu-Gang Jiang, Cong Wang
The paper introduces AgentLeak, a black‑box attack that clones the task‑solving capabilities of a strong LLM agent onto a weaker one by exploiting differences between successful and failed executions. Unlike prior skill‑stealing methods that only recover explicit skill artifacts, AgentLeak identifies and incorporates missing procedural behaviors, boosting task pass rates by over 40% and closing more than 80% of the capability gap across 20 scenarios. The study demonstrates that observable execution behavior can leak proprietary procedural knowledge, posing a confidentiality risk for LLM agents.
By Xiaoting Lyu, Yuhong Wu, Yufei Han, Shichang Liu, Liang Zhang, Bin Wang, Bin Wang, Xiaobo Ma, Wei Wang
arXiv:2607. 05001v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) reports are predominantly unstructured, heterogeneous, and noisy, which limits their direct usability for automated analysis and reasoning.
By Mouhamed Amine Bouchiha, Gregory Blanc
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:2607. 18366v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) serving as planners in tool-using autonomous agents introduce dynamic reliability risks in multi-turn execution.
By Shasha Yu, Fiona Carroll, Barry L. Bentley