mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

ARCeR: an Agentic RAG for the Automated Definition of Cyber Ranges

arXiv 2504.12143 ↗First posted 16 Apr 2025cs.CR cs.AIcited by 3

On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Agent threats, guardrails and governance

Abstract (arXiv)

The growing and evolving landscape of cybersecurity threats necessitates the development of supporting tools and platforms that allow for the creation of realistic IT environments operating within virtual, controlled settings as Cyber Ranges (CRs). CRs can be exploited for analyzing vulnerabilities and experimenting with the effectiveness of devised countermeasures, as well as serving as training environments for building cyber security skills and abilities for IT operators. This paper proposes ARCeR as an innovative solution for the automatic generation and deployment of CRs, starting from user-provided descriptions in a natural language. ARCeR relies on the Agentic RAG paradigm, which allows it to fully exploit state-of-art AI technologies. Experimental results show that ARCeR is able to successfully process prompts even in cases that LLMs or basic RAG systems are not able to cope with. Furthermore, ARCeR is able to target any CR framework provided that specific knowledge is made available to it.

Key facts. Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Placed in Agent threats, guardrails and governance, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 11 of its 37 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 16 Apr 2025.

Builds on

11 of 37 references.

Closest ancestors · 3

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2024LLM Agents can Autonomously Exploit One-day Vulnerabilities11 Apr
  2. 2024Depending on yourself when you should: Mentoring LLM with RL agents to become the master in cybersecurity games26 Mar
  3. 2024LLM Agents can Autonomously Hack Websites6 Feb

Other references · 8

  1. 2020Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Taskscited by 9,297
  2. 2019Sentence-BERT: Sentence Embeddings using Siamese BERT-Networkscited by 9,170
  3. 2024GPT-4o System Cardcited by 4,588
  4. 2023The Rise and Potential of Large Language Model Based Agents: A Surveycited by 1,439
  5. 2025Agentic Retrieval-Augmented Generation: A Survey on Agentic RAGcited by 249
  6. 2024Is Cosine-Similarity of Embeddings Really About Similarity?cited by 89
  7. 2024When LLMs Meet Cybersecurity: A Systematic Literature Reviewcited by 71
  8. 2020Automating the Generation of Cyber Range Virtual Scenarios with VSDLcited by 1

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 2; 2026: 1.

3 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2025CyberRAG: An Agentic RAG cyber attack classification and reporting tool
  2. 2025The Evolution of Agentic AI in Cybersecurity: From Single LLM Reasoners to Multi-Agent Systems and Autonomous Pipelines
  3. 2025Agentic AI Security: Threats, Defenses, Evaluation, and Open Challenges
  4. 2026BlueSTAR: Tiered Agentic Architecture for Autonomous Cyber Defense
  5. 2025Agentic AI for Cyber Resilience: A New Security Paradigm and Its System-Theoretic Foundations
  6. 2026CWE-bench: Refocusing Agentic Security from Exploitation to Defense
  7. 2026Bridging the First-Hour Gap: Evaluating AI Reliability and Benchmarking Deficiencies in Cyber Incident Response for Law Enforcement ↗
  8. 2026CritBench: A Framework for Evaluating Cybersecurity Capabilities of Large Language Models in IEC 61850 Digital Substation Environments