AutoAttacker: A Large Language Model Guided System to Implement Automatic Cyber-attacks

Fuente: arXiv
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Hauptverfasser: Xu, Jiacen, Stokes, Jack W., McDonald, Geoff, Bai, Xuesong, Marshall, David, Wang, Siyue, Swaminathan, Adith, Li, Zhou
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2024
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author Xu, Jiacen
Stokes, Jack W.
McDonald, Geoff
Bai, Xuesong
Marshall, David
Wang, Siyue
Swaminathan, Adith
Li, Zhou
author_facet Xu, Jiacen
Stokes, Jack W.
McDonald, Geoff
Bai, Xuesong
Marshall, David
Wang, Siyue
Swaminathan, Adith
Li, Zhou
contents Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated impressive results on natural language tasks, and security researchers are beginning to employ them in both offensive and defensive systems. In cyber-security, there have been multiple research efforts that utilize LLMs focusing on the pre-breach stage of attacks like phishing and malware generation. However, so far there lacks a comprehensive study regarding whether LLM-based systems can be leveraged to simulate the post-breach stage of attacks that are typically human-operated, or "hands-on-keyboard" attacks, under various attack techniques and environments. As LLMs inevitably advance, they may be able to automate both the pre- and post-breach attack stages. This shift may transform organizational attacks from rare, expert-led events to frequent, automated operations requiring no expertise and executed at automation speed and scale. This risks fundamentally changing global computer security and correspondingly causing substantial economic impacts, and a goal of this work is to better understand these risks now so we can better prepare for these inevitable ever-more-capable LLMs on the horizon. On the immediate impact side, this research serves three purposes. First, an automated LLM-based, post-breach exploitation framework can help analysts quickly test and continually improve their organization's network security posture against previously unseen attacks. Second, an LLM-based penetration test system can extend the effectiveness of red teams with a limited number of human analysts. Finally, this research can help defensive systems and teams learn to detect novel attack behaviors preemptively before their use in the wild....
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2403_01038
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle AutoAttacker: A Large Language Model Guided System to Implement Automatic Cyber-attacks
Xu, Jiacen
Stokes, Jack W.
McDonald, Geoff
Bai, Xuesong
Marshall, David
Wang, Siyue
Swaminathan, Adith
Li, Zhou
Cryptography and Security
Artificial Intelligence
Large language models (LLMs) have demonstrated impressive results on natural language tasks, and security researchers are beginning to employ them in both offensive and defensive systems. In cyber-security, there have been multiple research efforts that utilize LLMs focusing on the pre-breach stage of attacks like phishing and malware generation. However, so far there lacks a comprehensive study regarding whether LLM-based systems can be leveraged to simulate the post-breach stage of attacks that are typically human-operated, or "hands-on-keyboard" attacks, under various attack techniques and environments. As LLMs inevitably advance, they may be able to automate both the pre- and post-breach attack stages. This shift may transform organizational attacks from rare, expert-led events to frequent, automated operations requiring no expertise and executed at automation speed and scale. This risks fundamentally changing global computer security and correspondingly causing substantial economic impacts, and a goal of this work is to better understand these risks now so we can better prepare for these inevitable ever-more-capable LLMs on the horizon. On the immediate impact side, this research serves three purposes. First, an automated LLM-based, post-breach exploitation framework can help analysts quickly test and continually improve their organization's network security posture against previously unseen attacks. Second, an LLM-based penetration test system can extend the effectiveness of red teams with a limited number of human analysts. Finally, this research can help defensive systems and teams learn to detect novel attack behaviors preemptively before their use in the wild....
title AutoAttacker: A Large Language Model Guided System to Implement Automatic Cyber-attacks
topic Cryptography and Security
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.01038