The Disruptive Impact of Large Language Models on Capture the Flag Competitions and the Path Toward Fair Play

arXiv:2607.25425 · cs.AI, cs.CR, cs.CY · Submitted 2026-07-28 · Read on arXiv

Michael Macaulay, Harmony Bouabid, Guo Gen Ang, Sasha Shaw

cs.AI, cs.CR, cs.CY

Submitted: 2026-07-28

Comments: 20 pages, 3 figures, 1 table

License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/

Terminology

• Capture the Flag — 15× in this paper
• Benchmark — 12× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Accuracy — 3× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Core — 2× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Generative AI — 2× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Large Language Models (LLMs) — 2× in this paper · explained in 6 episodes
• Prompt Engineering — 2× in this paper · explained in 4 episodes
• Verification — 2× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Accountability — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Agentic Framework — 1× in this paper · explained in 6 episodes
• Agentic Loop — 1× in this paper · explained in 1 episode
• Agentic System — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes
• Benchmarking — 1× in this paper · explained in 3 episodes
• Clustering — 1× in this paper · explained in 2 episodes

Sources

• NYU CTF Bench: A Scalable Open-Source Benchmark Dataset for Evaluating LLMs in Offensive Security
• InterCode: Standardizing and Benchmarking Interactive Coding with Execution Feedback
• Cybench: A Framework for Evaluating Cybersecurity Capabilities and Risks of Language Models

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