CVE-Bench: A Benchmark for AI Agents’ Ability to Exploit Real-World Web Application Vulnerabilities

摘要

Large language model (LLM) agents are increasingly capable of autonomously conducting cyberattacks, posing significant threats to existing applications. This growing risk highlights the urgent need for a real-world benchmark to evaluate the ability of LLM agents to exploit web application vulnerabilities. However, existing benchmarks fall short as they are limited to abstracted Capture-the-Flag competitions or lack comprehensive coverage. Building a benchmark for real-world vulnerabilities involves both specialized exper-tise to reproduce exploits and a systematic approach to evaluating unpredictable attacks. To address this challenge, we introduce CVE-Bench, a real-world cybersecurity benchmark based on critical-severity Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures. In CVE-Bench, we design a sandbox framework that enables LLM agents to exploit vulnerable web applications in scenarios that mimic real-world conditions, while also providing effective evaluation of their exploits. Our experiments show that the state-of-the-art agent framework can exploit up to 13% of the vulnerabilities.