Recognition: no theorem link
From Rookie to Expert: Manipulating LLMs for Automated Vulnerability Exploitation in Enterprise Software
Pith reviewed 2026-05-16 20:00 UTC · model grok-4.3
The pith
Publicly available LLMs can be manipulated to generate functional exploits for every tested CVE in Odoo enterprise software.
A machine-rendered reading of the paper's core claim, the machinery that carries it, and where it could break.
Core claim
We propose RSA, a pretexting strategy of role-assignment, scenario-pretexting, and action-solicitation that bypasses LLM safety mechanisms to elicit functional exploits. When applied to Odoo CVEs, at least one of GPT-4o, Gemini, Claude, Microsoft Copilot, or DeepSeek produced a working exploit for every tested case within 3-5 prompting rounds, removing the manual effort previously required for such attacks.
What carries the argument
RSA pretexting strategy: a three-component prompting method that assigns the model a role, establishes a justifying scenario, and directly solicits exploit-generating actions.
If this is right
- Security models relying on a technical expertise barrier between developers and attackers are invalidated.
- The technical complexity of vulnerability descriptions no longer provides meaningful protection.
- Traditional boundaries between software-building tools and attack tools dissolve.
- Security practices must be redesigned around the reality that prompt crafting alone enables exploitation.
Where Pith is reading between the lines
- LLM providers may need targeted safeguards that detect and block requests for exploit code even when framed innocuously.
- Enterprise deployments could benefit from monitoring or restricting LLM interactions that involve vulnerability details.
- The approach might extend to other platforms, raising questions about whether similar prompting succeeds against unknown vulnerabilities.
Load-bearing premise
The generated code consists of original, functional exploits created from the prompts rather than recalled public CVE information.
What would settle it
Execute each generated exploit on a clean Odoo installation with no internet access to CVE databases and confirm whether the exploit succeeds without external references.
Figures
read the original abstract
LLMs democratize software engineering by enabling non-programmers to create applications, but this same accessibility fundamentally undermines security assumptions that have guided software engineering for decades. We show in this work how publicly available LLMs can be socially engineered to transform novices into capable attackers, challenging the foundational principle that exploitation requires technical expertise. To that end, we propose RSA (Role-assignment, Scenario-pretexting, and Action-solicitation), a pretexting strategy that manipulates LLMs into generating functional exploits despite their safety mechanisms. Testing against Odoo -- a widely used ERP platform, we evaluated five mainstream LLMs (GPT-4o, Gemini, Claude, Microsoft Copilot, and DeepSeek) and successfully exploited every tested CVE: at least one LLM produced a functional exploit for each within 3-5 prompting rounds. While prior work~\cite{jin2025good} found LLM-assisted attacks difficult and requiring manual effort, we demonstrate that this overhead can be eliminated entirely. Our findings invalidate core software engineering security principles: the distinction between technical and non-technical actors no longer provides valid threat models; technical complexity of vulnerability descriptions offers no protection when LLMs can abstract it away; and traditional security boundaries dissolve when the same tools that build software can be manipulated to break it. This represents a paradigm shift in software engineering -- we must redesign security practices for an era where exploitation requires only the ability to craft prompts, not understand code. Artifacts available at: https://anonymous.4open.science/r/From-Rookie-to-Attacker-D8B3.
Editorial analysis
A structured set of objections, weighed in public.
Referee Report
Summary. The paper proposes the RSA (Role-assignment, Scenario-pretexting, and Action-solicitation) prompting strategy to socially engineer publicly available LLMs into generating functional exploits for CVEs in the Odoo ERP platform. It evaluates five mainstream LLMs and claims that at least one LLM produced a working exploit for every tested CVE within 3-5 rounds, arguing that this eliminates prior manual overhead and invalidates core software-engineering security assumptions about the need for technical expertise.
Significance. If the results hold with proper verification, the work would be significant for demonstrating that prompt-based manipulation can reliably bypass LLM safety mechanisms to produce exploits, lowering the barrier for non-experts and challenging threat models that assume exploitation requires code understanding. It extends prior findings on LLM-assisted attacks by claiming zero manual effort and provides an artifact link for reproducibility.
major comments (2)
- [Evaluation] Evaluation section: the central claim that 'at least one LLM produced a functional exploit for each' CVE is not supported by any description of the verification procedure. The manuscript supplies no details on the controlled vulnerable Odoo instance, success criteria (e.g., observed shell access, privilege escalation, or data exfiltration), reproduction steps, or controls distinguishing new exploit generation from regurgitation of public CVE information. This is load-bearing for the 'functional' and 'paradigm shift' assertions.
- [Results] §3 (RSA strategy) and Results: the paper asserts that RSA eliminates manual effort compared to Jin et al. (2025), yet provides no quantitative breakdown of success rates per LLM per CVE, failure modes, or number of CVEs tested. Without these data, the 'every tested CVE' claim cannot be assessed for robustness or generalizability.
minor comments (1)
- [Abstract] The anonymous artifact link should be updated in the camera-ready version to a permanent repository containing the exact prompts, CVE list, and verification scripts.
Simulated Author's Rebuttal
We thank the referee for their constructive feedback, which highlights important areas for strengthening the manuscript. We address each major comment below and will revise the paper to provide the requested details on evaluation procedures and quantitative results.
read point-by-point responses
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Referee: [Evaluation] Evaluation section: the central claim that 'at least one LLM produced a functional exploit for each' CVE is not supported by any description of the verification procedure. The manuscript supplies no details on the controlled vulnerable Odoo instance, success criteria (e.g., observed shell access, privilege escalation, or data exfiltration), reproduction steps, or controls distinguishing new exploit generation from regurgitation of public CVE information. This is load-bearing for the 'functional' and 'paradigm shift' assertions.
Authors: We agree that the current manuscript does not provide sufficient procedural details in the Evaluation section. In the revision, we will add a dedicated subsection describing the controlled vulnerable Odoo instance (including exact version, configuration, and isolation setup), explicit success criteria (e.g., verified shell access via command execution, privilege escalation confirmed by specific outputs, or data exfiltration via file retrieval), full reproduction steps, and controls such as cross-checking generated exploits against public CVE repositories and LLM knowledge cutoffs to distinguish novel generation from regurgitation. The artifacts at the provided anonymous link already include interaction logs, verification scripts, and environment snapshots; we will reference these more explicitly and include excerpts in the text. revision: yes
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Referee: [Results] §3 (RSA strategy) and Results: the paper asserts that RSA eliminates manual effort compared to Jin et al. (2025), yet provides no quantitative breakdown of success rates per LLM per CVE, failure modes, or number of CVEs tested. Without these data, the 'every tested CVE' claim cannot be assessed for robustness or generalizability.
Authors: We acknowledge the need for quantitative detail to support the claims. In the revised Results section, we will include a table reporting the total number of CVEs tested, per-LLM success rates (e.g., which LLMs succeeded on which CVEs within 3-5 rounds), and a breakdown of failure modes (such as refusals, incomplete code, or non-functional outputs). This will directly substantiate the 'at least one LLM per CVE' result and allow evaluation of robustness. The comparison to Jin et al. will be expanded with explicit notes on the absence of manual post-processing in our approach. revision: yes
Circularity Check
No circularity; empirical results independent of inputs
full rationale
The paper reports an empirical evaluation: the RSA prompting strategy is applied to five LLMs, and success is claimed as an observed outcome ('at least one LLM produced a functional exploit for each within 3-5 prompting rounds') on specific Odoo CVEs. No equations, parameters, derivations, or self-referential definitions appear. The single citation to prior work (jin2025good) is external, not self-citation by these authors, and is not used to justify uniqueness or load-bearing premises. No fitted inputs are renamed as predictions, no ansatzes are smuggled, and no known results are merely relabeled. The central claim is an experimental report rather than a derivation that reduces to its own inputs by construction.
Axiom & Free-Parameter Ledger
axioms (1)
- domain assumption Publicly available LLMs possess the capability to generate functional exploit code when appropriately prompted despite safety alignments.
invented entities (1)
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RSA (Role-assignment, Scenario-pretexting, and Action-solicitation)
no independent evidence
Reference graph
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discussion (0)
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