mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Trident : How to Break Deep Reinforcement Learning Cyber Defenses (Agentic)

arXiv 2608.04317 ↗First posted 5 Aug 2026cs.CR cs.AI cs.LGcited by 1

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

Abstract (arXiv)

Autonomous cyber defense systems based on Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) have attracted significant research attention, yet remain evaluated almost exclusively against static, heuristic red agents, leaving their robustness against adaptive threats critically understudied. Meanwhile, recent advances in Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR) have improved LLM reasoning, but their integration into cybersecurity remains elusive due to the absence of suitable benchmark environments and interaction datasets. To bridge this gap, we introduce Trident, an agentic LLM red teaming framework comprising three components: a dynamic benchmark with isolated sandbox servers spanning CybORG CAGE 4 and CyberWheel, a dataset comprises over 13,000 high-fidelity red-blue interaction trajectories for RLVR, and a ``Code-as-Policy'' RLVR agentic architecture Trident Agentic). The latter reformulates red agent training as a contextual bandit via a tripartite Log Summarizer--Planner--Coder design, where a trainable Planner generates complete attack strategies from compressed execution logs, which a frozen Coder translates into executable Python policies deployed against live DRL defenders. Empirical evaluations reveal a fundamental brittleness in existing defenses: with a single trainable 7B planner, Trident reduces blue agent defensive performance by an average of 522% compared to static red agent baselines while autonomously discovering emergent behaviors such as decoy avoidance and adaptive state prioritization that static heuristics entirely fail to uncover.

Key facts. Cited by 1 paper 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 50 of its 70 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 5 Aug 2026.

Builds on

50 of 70 references.

Closest ancestors · 8

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025Cyber-Zero: Training Cybersecurity Agents without Runtime29 Jul
  2. 2025DefenderBench: A Toolkit for Evaluating Language Agents in Cybersecurity Environments31 May
  3. 2025CVE-Bench: A Benchmark for AI Agents' Ability to Exploit Real-World Web Application Vulnerabilities21 Mar
  4. 2024RedCode: Risky Code Execution and Generation Benchmark for Code Agents12 Nov
  5. 2024EnIGMA: Interactive Tools Substantially Assist LM Agents in Finding Security Vulnerabilities24 Sep
  6. 2024Teams of LLM Agents can Exploit Zero-Day Vulnerabilities2 Jun
  7. 2024LLM Agents can Autonomously Exploit One-day Vulnerabilities11 Apr
  8. 2024LLM Agents can Autonomously Hack Websites6 Feb

Other references · 42

  1. 2017Proximal Policy Optimization Algorithmscited by 15,215
  2. 2021Training Verifiers to Solve Math Word Problemscited by 10,109
  3. 2024DeepSeekMath: Pushing the Limits of Mathematical Reasoning in Open Language Modelscited by 9,379
  4. 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,695
  5. 2023Efficient Memory Management for Large Language Model Serving with PagedAttentioncited by 5,944
  6. 2024GPT-4o System Cardcited by 4,588
  7. 2022Large Language Models are Zero-Shot Reasonerscited by 4,374
  8. 2024HybridFlow: A Flexible and Efficient RLHF Frameworkcited by 2,057
  9. 2023AutoGen: Enabling Next-Gen LLM Applications via Multi-Agent Conversationcited by 1,988
  10. 2025Search-R1: Training LLMs to Reason and Leverage Search Engines with Reinforcement Learningcited by 1,444
  11. 2022Code as Policies: Language Model Programs for Embodied Controlcited by 1,210
  12. 2024Qwen2.5-Coder Technical Reportcited by 1,203
30 more
  1. 2023AgentVerse: Facilitating Multi-Agent Collaboration and Exploring Emergent Behaviorscited by 598
  2. 2023Eureka: Human-Level Reward Design via Coding Large Language Modelscited by 571
  3. 2017Ray: A Distributed Framework for Emerging AI Applicationscited by 527
  4. 2025Visual-RFT: Visual Reinforcement Fine-Tuningcited by 513
  5. 2025DeepMath-103K: A Large-Scale, Challenging, Decontaminated, and Verifiable Mathematical Dataset for Advancing Reasoningcited by 280
  6. 2019Devign: Effective Vulnerability Identification by Learning Comprehensive Program Semantics via Graph Neural Networkscited by 272
  7. 2025SWE-RL: Advancing LLM Reasoning via Reinforcement Learning on Open Software Evolutioncited by 263
  8. 2023InterCode: Standardizing and Benchmarking Interactive Coding with Execution Feedbackcited by 238
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  10. 2023Purple Llama CyberSecEval: A Secure Coding Benchmark for Language Modelscited by 138
  11. 2024NYU CTF Bench: A Scalable Open-Source Benchmark Dataset for Evaluating LLMs in Offensive Securitycited by 93
  12. 2025ACECODER: Acing Coder RL via Automated Test-Case Synthesiscited by 93
  13. 2024CyberSecEval 2: A Wide-Ranging Cybersecurity Evaluation Suite for Large Language Modelscited by 89
  14. 2023Getting pwn'd by AI: Penetration Testing with Large Language Modelscited by 83
  15. 2025CyberGym: Evaluating AI Agents' Real-World Cybersecurity Capabilities at Scalecited by 78
  16. 2025In-the-Flow Agentic System Optimization for Effective Planning and Tool Usecited by 72
  17. 2022ET-BERT: A Contextualized Datagram Representation with Pre-training Transformers for Encrypted Traffic Classificationcited by 66
  18. 2024CTIBench: A Benchmark for Evaluating LLMs in Cyber Threat Intelligencecited by 62
  19. 2024CYBERSECEVAL 3: Advancing the Evaluation of Cybersecurity Risks and Capabilities in Large Language Modelscited by 58
  20. 2021Contrasting Centralized and Decentralized Critics in Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learningcited by 56
  21. 2023LLMs as Hackers: Autonomous Linux Privilege Escalation Attackscited by 27
  22. 2025Primus: A Pioneering Collection of Open-Source Datasets for Cybersecurity LLM Trainingcited by 23
  23. 2024Hierarchical Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning for Cyber Network Defensecited by 17
  24. 2025SymRTLO: Enhancing RTL Code Optimization with LLMs and Neuron-Inspired Symbolic Reasoningcited by 16
  25. 2025Large Language Models are Autonomous Cyber Defenderscited by 15
  26. 2026SPPO: Sequence-Level PPO for Long-Horizon Reasoning Taskscited by 9
  27. 2025Automated Cyber Defense with Generalizable Graph-based Reinforcement Learning Agentscited by 7
  28. 2026Learning to Attack and Defend: Adaptive Red Teaming of Language Models via GRPOcited by 5
  29. 2026SoK: The Pitfalls of Deep Reinforcement Learning for Cybersecuritycited by 4
  30. 2026RedSage: A Cybersecurity Generalist LLMcited by 1

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Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 1.

1 paper.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

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  2. 2026Beyond Rewards in Reinforcement Learning for Cyber Defence
  3. 2026Distilling Knowledge from Large Language Models into Lightweight Reinforcement Learning Agents for Autonomous Cyber Operations
  4. 2025Less is more? Rewards in RL for Cyber Defence
  5. 2026Ask the Expert: LLM-Guided Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Cyber Defense
  6. 2026Learning Red Agent Policy from Observations for Neurosymbolic Autonomous Cyber Agents
  7. 2026PISmith: Reinforcement Learning-based Red Teaming for Prompt Injection Defenses
  8. 2025Automatic LLM Red Teaming