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Abstract - 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. Using ground-truth injection and knowledge-driven ablation across 70 high-fidelity web vulnerability testbeds, our framework isolates exploitation performance from reconnaissance noise. We empirically evaluate five open-source penetration-testing agents, covering multiagent, monolithic, and graph-driven architectures, on a strictly aligned subset of 50 representative vulnerabilities. The results reveal a substantial capability gap. With accurate vulnerability context, agents achieve a functional success rate of up to 90.0%, whereas autonomous reconnaissance, measured by targeted vulnerability recall, plateaus at approximately 50.0%, primarily due to failures in parsing unstructured telemetry. Cross-architectural analysis further reveals distinct capability niches: multi-agent isolation is more effective for long-sequence interactions such as de-serialization, while monolithic and graph-driven designs perform better on short-chain injections and cross-session access-control vulnerabilities, respectively. This decoupled evaluation work provides a fine-grained benchmarking protocol and an empirical basis for designing next-generation automated offensive security agents.
将侦察与利用解耦:衡量基于大语言模型的Web渗透测试能力边界 /
Decoupling Reconnaissance and Exploitation: Measuring the Capability Boundaries of LLM-Based Web Penetration Testing
1️⃣ 一句话总结
本文通过将渗透测试中的信息收集(侦察)与漏洞利用分开评估,发现当前基于大语言模型的自动化渗透测试智能体在理想条件下漏洞利用成功率可达90%,但自主侦察能力仅约50%,并揭示了不同架构(多智能体、单体、图驱动)在特定漏洞类型上的优劣。