Really interesting blog post from Anthropic:

In a recent evaluation of AI models’ cyber capabilities, current Claude models can now succeed at multistage attacks on networks with dozens of hosts using only standard, open-source tools, instead of the custom tools needed by previous generations. This illustrates how barriers to the use of AI in relatively autonomous cyber workflows are rapidly coming down, and highlights the importance of security fundamentals like promptly patching known vulnerabilities.

[…]

A notable development during the testing of Claude Sonnet 4.5 is that the model can now succeed on a minority of the networks without the custom cyber toolkit needed by previous generations. In particular, Sonnet 4.5 can now exfiltrate all of the (simulated) personal information in a high-fidelity simulation of the Equifax data breach—­one of the costliest cyber attacks in history—­using only a Bash shell on a widely-available Kali Linux host (standard, open-source tools for penetration testing; not a custom toolkit). Sonnet 4.5 accomplishes this by instantly recognizing a publicized CVE and writing code to exploit it without needing to look it up or iterate on it. Recalling that the original Equifax breach happened by exploiting a publicized CVE that had not yet been patched, the prospect of highly competent and fast AI agents leveraging this approach underscores the pressing need for security best practices like prompt updates and patches.

Read the whole thing. Automatic exploitation will be a major change in cybersecurity. And things are happening fast. There have been significant developments since I wrote this in October.

This blog is for anyone who is interested in finding a good penetration testing company.

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Novee provides continuous AI-driven penetration testing to uncover and address novel vulnerabilities.

The post Novee Emerges From Stealth With $51.5 Million in Funding appeared first on SecurityWeek.

Many web application firewalls (WAFs) can be bypassed by simply sending large amounts of extra data in the request body along with your payload. Most WAFs will only process requests up to a certain size limit. How the WAF is configured to handle these large requests determines exploitability, but some common WAFs will allow it by default.

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Discover the differences between red teaming and penetration testing. Learn when to use each approach and how they strengthen your security posture.

The post Red Teaming vs Pentesting: What’s the Difference? appeared first on OffSec.

One tool that I can't live without when performing a penetration test in an Active Directory environment is called NetExec. Being able to efficiently authenticate against multiple systems in the network is crucial, and NetExec is an incredibly powerful tool that helps automate a lot of this activity.

The post Getting Started with NetExec: Streamlining Network Discovery and Access appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..

In my journey to explore how I can use artificial intelligence to assist in penetration testing, I experimented with a security-focused chat bot created by Jason Haddix called Arcanum Cyber Security Bot (available on https://chatgpt.com/gpts). Jason engineered this bot to leverage up-to-date technical information related to application security and penetration testing.

The post Augmenting Penetration Testing Methodology with Artificial Intelligence – Part 3: Arcanum Cyber Security Bot appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..

A common use case for LLMs is rapid software development. One of the first ways I used AI in my penetration testing methodology was for payload generation.

The post Augmenting Penetration Testing Methodology with Artificial Intelligence – Part 2: Copilot appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..

Burpference is a Burp Suite plugin that takes requests and responses to and from in-scope web applications and sends them off to an LLM for inference. In the context of artificial intelligence, inference is taking a trained model, providing it with new information, and asking it to analyze this new information based on its training.

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This webcast originally aired on February 27, 2025. Join us for a very special free one-hour Black Hills Information Security webcast with Corey Ham & Kelli Tarala on why your […]

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In this video, John Strand discusses the complexities and challenges of penetration testing, emphasizing that it goes beyond just finding and exploiting vulnerabilities.

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In this video, Kent Ickler and Jordan Drysdale discuss Attack Tactics 9: Shadow Credentials for Primaries, focusing on a specific technique used in penetration testing services at Black Hills Information Security

The post Attack Tactics 9: Shadow Creds for PrivEsc w/ Kent & Jordan appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..

In this video, Dave Blandford discusses a beginner's guide to creating Burp Suite extensions. The session covers an overview of what Burp extensions are, how they can improve testing capabilities, and the tools and languages used in developing them.

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In this video, experts delve into the intricacies of desktop application penetration testing methodologies.

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In today’s world, security is more important than ever. As organizations increasingly rely on technology to drive business, digital threats are becoming more sophisticated, varied, and difficult to defend against. […]

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By Ray Van Hoose, Wade Wells, and Edna Jonsson || Guest Authors This post is comprised of 3 articles that were originally published in the second edition of the InfoSec […]

The post Pentesting, Threat Hunting, and SOC: An Overview appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..

This webcast was originally published on September 26, 2024. In this video, Kevin Klingbile from Black Hills Information Security discusses the intricacies of Azure Cloud services and M365, focusing on […]

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This article originally featured in the very first issue of our PROMPT# zine — Choose Wisely. You can find that issue (and all the others) here: https://www.blackhillsinfosec.com/prompt-zine/ I remember a […]

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tl;dr: Install Wifiphisher on Kali and run a basic attack.  This crappy little copy/paste-able operation resulted in a functional Wifiphisher virtual environment on Kali (as of January 22, 2024).   Two […]

The post How to Install and Perform Wi-Fi Attacks with Wifiphisher  appeared first on Black Hills Information Security, Inc..

Tom Smith // At Black Hills Information Security (BHIS), we deal with all manner of clients, public and private. Until a month or two ago, though, we’d never dealt with […]

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