# Rise of the HaCRS: Augmenting Autonomous Cyber Reasoning Systems with Human Assistance

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1708.02749 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/1708.02749/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 9 Aug 2017.

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [A Survey of Human-in-the-loop for Machine Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2108.00941/) (2021)
- [SCALE: Towards Collaborative Content Analysis in Social Science with Large Language Model Agents and Human Intervention](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.10937/) (2025)
- [Cybersecurity is the True Frontier for Generative AI Success or Failure](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2606.28929/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

As the size and complexity of software systems increase, the number and sophistication of software security flaws increase as well. The analysis of these flaws began as a manual approach, but it soon became apparent that tools were necessary to assist human experts in this task, resulting in a number of techniques and approaches that automated aspects of the vulnerability analysis process. Recently, DARPA carried out the Cyber Grand Challenge, a competition among autonomous vulnerability analysis systems designed to push the tool-assisted human-centered paradigm into the territory of complete automation. However, when the autonomous systems were pitted against human experts it became clear that certain tasks, albeit simple, could not be carried out by an autonomous system, as they require an understanding of the logic of the application under analysis. Based on this observation, we propose a shift in the vulnerability analysis paradigm, from tool-assisted human-centered to human-assisted tool-centered. In this paradigm, the automated system orchestrates the vulnerability analysis process, and leverages humans (with different levels of expertise) to perform well-defined sub-tasks, whose results are integrated in the analysis. As a result, it is possible to scale the analysis to a larger number of programs, and, at the same time, optimize the use of expensive human resources. In this paper, we detail our design for a human-assisted automated vulnerability analysis system, describe its implementation atop an open-sourced autonomous vulnerability analysis system that participated in the Cyber Grand Challenge, and evaluate and discuss the significant improvements that non-expert human assistance can offer to automated analysis approaches.