# Understanding Hackers' Work: An Empirical Study of Offensive Security Practitioners

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2308.07057 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2308.07057/

## Key facts

- Cited by 8 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 14 Aug 2023.

## Built on by (most cited first, 8 of 8)

- [VulnBot: Autonomous Penetration Testing for A Multi-Agent Collaborative Framework](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2501.13411/) (2025)
- [LLMs as Hackers: Autonomous Linux Privilege Escalation Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2310.11409/) (2023)
- [Benchmarking Practices in LLM-driven Offensive Security: Testbeds, Metrics, and Experiment Design](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2504.10112/) (2025)
- [Towards Automated Penetration Testing: Introducing LLM Benchmark, Analysis, and Improvements](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.17141/) (2024)
- [AutoPentest: Enhancing Vulnerability Management With Autonomous LLM Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.10321/) (2025)
- [AutoPT: How Far Are We from the End2End Automated Web Penetration Testing?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.01236/) (2024)
- [Restoring Gaussian Blurred Face Images for Deanonymization Attacks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.12344/) (2025)
- [The Ethics of Autonomous AI Agents for Offensive Security](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.20255/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Offensive security-tests are a common way to pro-actively discover potential vulnerabilities. They are performed by specialists, often called penetration-testers or white-hat hackers. The chronic lack of available white-hat hackers prevents sufficient security test coverage of software. Research into automation tries to alleviate this problem by improving the efficiency of security testing. To achieve this, researchers and tool builders need a solid understanding of how hackers work, their assumptions, and pain points. In this paper, we present a first data-driven exploratory qualitative study of twelve security professionals, their work and problems occurring therein. We perform a thematic analysis to gain insights into the execution of security assignments, hackers' thought processes and encountered challenges. This analysis allows us to conclude with recommendations for researchers and tool builders to increase the efficiency of their automation and identify novel areas for research.