mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

RedTeamLLM: an Agentic AI framework for offensive security

arXiv 2505.06913 ↗First posted 11 May 2025cs.CR cs.AI cs.CYcited by 6

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

Abstract (arXiv)

From automated intrusion testing to discovery of zero-day attacks before software launch, agentic AI calls for great promises in security engineering. This strong capability is bound with a similar threat: the security and research community must build up its models before the approach is leveraged by malicious actors for cybercrime. We therefore propose and evaluate RedTeamLLM, an integrated architecture with a comprehensive security model for automatization of pentest tasks. RedTeamLLM follows three key steps: summarizing, reasoning and act, which embed its operational capacity. This novel framework addresses four open challenges: plan correction, memory management, context window constraint, and generality vs. specialization. Evaluation is performed through the automated resolution of a range of entry-level, but not trivial, CTF challenges. The contribution of the reasoning capability of our agentic AI framework is specifically evaluated.

Key facts. Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Agent threats, guardrails and governance, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 28 of its 45 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 11 May 2025.

Builds on

28 of 45 references.

Closest ancestors · 4

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2024HackSynth: LLM Agent and Evaluation Framework for Autonomous Penetration Testing2 Dec
  2. 2024PentestAgent: Incorporating LLM Agents to Automated Penetration Testing7 Nov
  3. 2024LLM Agents can Autonomously Exploit One-day Vulnerabilities11 Apr
  4. 2024LLM Agents can Autonomously Hack Websites6 Feb

Other references · 24

  1. 2022Chain-of-Thought Prompting Elicits Reasoning in Large Language Modelscited by 12,302
  2. 2020Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Taskscited by 9,160
  3. 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,355
  4. 2022Self-Consistency Improves Chain of Thought Reasoning in Language Modelscited by 5,601
  5. 2023Tree of Thoughts: Deliberate Problem Solving with Large Language Modelscited by 3,155
  6. 2022Automatic Chain of Thought Prompting in Large Language Modelscited by 684
  7. 2023A Survey on Large Language Model (LLM) Security and Privacy: The Good, the Bad, and the Uglycited by 380
  8. 2023ADaPT: As-Needed Decomposition and Planning with Language Modelscited by 172
  9. 2023Structured Chain-of-Thought Prompting for Code Generationcited by 136
  10. 2023Chain of Code: Reasoning with a Language Model-Augmented Code Emulatorcited by 120
  11. 2024AutoAttacker: A Large Language Model Guided System to Implement Automatic Cyber-attackscited by 94
  12. 2023PEARL: Prompting Large Language Models to Plan and Execute Actions Over Long Documentscited by 61
12 more
  1. 2024CYBERSECEVAL 3: Advancing the Evaluation of Cybersecurity Risks and Capabilities in Large Language Modelscited by 56
  2. 2024TDAG: A Multi-Agent Framework based on Dynamic Task Decomposition and Agent Generationcited by 50
  3. 2024Breaking Down the Defenses: A Comparative Survey of Attacks on Large Language Modelscited by 42
  4. 2024EvoCodeBench: An Evolving Code Generation Benchmark with Domain-Specific Evaluationscited by 33
  5. 2023Decoding the Threat Landscape : ChatGPT, FraudGPT, and WormGPT in Social Engineering Attackscited by 22
  6. 2025Fun-tuning: Characterizing the Vulnerability of Proprietary LLMs to Optimization-based Prompt Injection Attacks via the Fine-Tuning Interfacecited by 15
  7. 2023DarkBERT: A Language Model for the Dark Side of the Internetcited by 13
  8. 2024On the (In)Security of LLM App Storescited by 12
  9. 2024Security Threats in Agentic AI Systemcited by 11
  10. 2024Towards Automated Penetration Testing: Introducing LLM Benchmark, Analysis, and Improvementscited by 11
  11. 2025Agentic AI and the Cyber Arms Racecited by 2
  12. 2024Countering Autonomous Cyber Threatscited by 1

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2025: 3; 2026: 3.

6 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026From Controlled to the Wild: Evaluation of Pentesting Agents for the Real-World
  2. 2026Red-Teaming the Agentic Red-Team
  3. 2026Black-Box Red Teaming of Agentic AI: A Taxonomy-Driven Framework for Automated Risk Discovery
  4. 2025PentestMCP: A Toolkit for Agentic Penetration Testing
  5. 2026Securing the AI Agent: A Unified Framework for Multi-Layer Agent Red Teaming
  6. 2025The Evolution of Agentic AI in Cybersecurity: From Single LLM Reasoners to Multi-Agent Systems and Autonomous Pipelines
  7. 2025Agentic AI for Cyber Resilience: A New Security Paradigm and Its System-Theoretic Foundations
  8. 2026Co-RedTeam: Orchestrated Security Discovery and Exploitation with LLM Agents