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New framework uses free LLMs for automated penetration testing

By PulseAugur Editorial · [2 sources] ·

Researchers have developed PentestChain, a novel framework for automated penetration testing that utilizes free-tier and local Large Language Models (LLMs) to reduce costs. The system employs a cost-aware AI cascade, prioritizing local models like qwen2.5:7b before resorting to free-tier cloud services, thereby making continuous automated testing accessible to smaller organizations. PentestChain also analyzes the security risks associated with exposing its Model Context Protocol (MCP) interface and proposes mitigations, while establishing a reproducible evaluation protocol for benchmarking against existing tools. AI

IMPACT Enables cost-effective, continuous automated penetration testing for smaller organizations by leveraging free-tier and local LLMs.

RANK_REASON The cluster describes a research paper detailing a new framework for automated penetration testing using LLMs.

Read on arXiv cs.AI →

AI-generated summary · Google Gemini · from 2 sources. How we write summaries →

New framework uses free LLMs for automated penetration testing

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The cluster describes a research paper detailing a new framework for automated penetration testing using LLMs.
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COVERAGE [2]

  1. arXiv cs.AI TIER_1 English(EN) · Rushabh Vipulkumar Patel, Dipo Dunsin, Mohammed Almaiah, Mohamed Chahine Ghanem ·

    PentestChain: A Cost-Aware, MCP-Orchestrated Framework for Automated Penetration Testing with Free-Tier LLMs

    arXiv:2609.18120v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: AI-driven penetration testing has been demonstrated with premium frontier models such as GPT-4, but the per-engagement token cost makes continuous, automated testing unaffordable for the smaller organisations that need it most. Th…

  2. Hugging Face Daily Papers TIER_1 English(EN) ·

    PentestChain: A Cost-Aware, MCP-Orchestrated Framework for Automated Penetration Testing with Free-Tier LLMs

    AI-driven penetration testing has been demonstrated with premium frontier models such as GPT-4, but the per-engagement token cost makes continuous, automated testing unaffordable for the smaller organisations that need it most. This paper presents PentestChain, a ten-phase automa…

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