Good News for Script Kiddies? Evaluating Large Language Models for Automated Exploit Generation

Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable capabilities in code-related tasks, raising concerns about their potential for automated exploit generation (AEG). This paper presents the first systematic study on LLMs' effectiveness in AEG, evaluating both their cooperativeness and technical proficiency. To mitigate dataset bias, we introduce a benchmark with refactored versions of five software security labs. Additionally, we design an LLM-based attacker to systematically prompt LLMs for exploit generation. Our experiments reveal that GPT-4 and GPT-4o exhibit high cooperativeness, comparable to uncensored models, while Llama3 is the most resistant. However, no model successfully generates exploits for refactored labs, though 's minimal errors highlight the potential for LLM-driven AEG advancements.

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Publication Details

Published
2025-05-15
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1109/spw67851.2025.00039
Citations
1
Primary Topic
Advanced Malware Detection Techniques
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
1.49
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article

Good News for Script Kiddies? Evaluating Large Language Models for Automated Exploit Generation

Qian Fu, Yuekang Li, David Jin
1 citations
Advanced Malware Detection Techniques
1.49
article

Good News for Script Kiddies? Evaluating Large Language Models for Automated Exploit Generation

Qian Fu, Yuekang Li, David Jin
article en
1 citations

Abstract

Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable capabilities in code-related tasks, raising concerns about their potential for automated exploit generation (AEG). This paper presents the first systematic study on LLMs' effectiveness in AEG, evaluating both their cooperativeness and technical proficiency. To mitigate dataset bias, we introduce a benchmark with refactored versions of five software security labs. Additionally, we design an LLM-based attacker to systematically prompt LLMs for exploit generation. Our experiments reveal that GPT-4 and GPT-4o exhibit high cooperativeness, comparable to uncensored models, while Llama3 is the most resistant. However, no model successfully generates exploits for refactored labs, though 's minimal errors highlight the potential for LLM-driven AEG advancements.

Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (AU), UNSW Sydney (AU), Data61 (AU)
Quality Education
Openalex Percentile: Top 17%
Advanced Malware Detection Techniques
1.49
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