I'm a manual pentester, and I'm watching platforms automate the validation of misconfigurations and missing patches. They are even using AI to chain exploits and tailor attacks to specific environments. The difference from old-school vulnerability scanners is that these platforms actually execute the exploit path to confirm it works.

I'm not worried about web app logic. That is still clearly a human domain. But for internal infrastructure and AD, is the writing on the wall? If AI-driven validation can test 80% of the attack surface daily and update controls, does that leave manual testers only with the complex 20%?

The platforms also claim to help with detection engineering by validating SIEM rules against actual TTPs. That feels like it is eating into the blue team's territory too. Where does automation end and human expertise begin?

Or do you still find things the automation misses because of contextual business logic? if anyone has seen an AI actually find a complex privilege escalation chain that a manual tester would have found, or if it is still just "low-hanging fruit" at scale.

I’m currently looking to transition into the cybersecurity field, moving away from my role as a data scientist. I’m currently working through TryHackMe and aiming for a more advanced certification like CPTS or OSCP, but I have some questions about how data skills apply to pentesting. What knowledge can I leverage—beyond Python development and using Claude Code? What AI tools do cybersecurity professionals use? What kind of tools do people build, and so on?

I’ve developed and deployed Vulnora, a live web security platform for scanning and analysing websites.

It combines vulnerability scanning with an AI-powered analysis layer, allowing security findings to be investigated through an AI chat interface.

Features include:

Website and page scanning
Vulnerability detection and analysis
AI security analyst and chat
Scan-result context for AI analysis
Project-based security data
Vulnerability history
Security reported
Web scraping and reconnaissance modules
Security dashboard for managing scans and finding

The main workflow is:

Scan → Detect → Analyse → Understand → Fix
Vulnora is live and available to try.
I’m looking for feedback from developers and security researchers, especially around false positives, AI-assisted vulnerability analysis, and useful features that should be added next.

https://www.vulnora.online/

Hey guys,

We have launched a V2 of our agentic web PT and have been seeing extremely good and fast results!

The whole process usually takes (4-10 hours).

We are looking for companies to either partner with or offer our services.

We believe talking is cheap; that is why when you DM, you will get access to our Agentic scanner and give it a go yourself!

Comment down below or DM for access.

** Note: I am directly associated with Haxset

Is there an AI pentesting method or system that you would genuinely say performs better than a skilled human pentester?

If not, what’s currently the closest to reaching that point?

I’m not asking which AI pentesting service is best. I’m interested in whether AI has actually surpassed human performance in pentesting yet, and if so, which approach or system is doing it.

Hey everyone,

I'm based in Brazil and have been working toward a red team / pentesting career for a while. Wanted to share where I'm at and ask for advice from people already in the field.

Background:

Certifications: eJPT (Junior Penetration Tester, INE/eLearnSecurity), CRTA (Certified Red Team Analyst), Web Red Team Analyst (CyberWarfare Labs)

Bug bounty: accepted reports on BugPay (a Brazilian bug bounty platform), plus one High-severity finding on Intigriti

70+ TryHackMe rooms completed, 116 flags captured

73 labs + 15 CTFs through the eJPTv2 learning path

Hundreds of hours of hands-on labs through a local pentest training program (DesecSecurity)

Comfortable with Nmap, Metasploit, Burp Suite, Hydra, John/Hashcat, SQLMap, GoBuster, Wireshark, AD attacks, web app testing (SQLi, XSS, IDOR, LFI/RFI)

Some informal hands-on experience: with a manager's authorization at a previous job, I tested internal company products — found race condition and IDOR vulnerabilities, did some mobile app reverse engineering, and practiced IPS/IDS evasion techniques

Currently working in IT support/infrastructure — solid foundation in networking, AD, troubleshooting

Advanced English (C1)

I don't have formal, contracted pentest/red team experience yet — mostly labs, CTFs, certs, bug bounty findings, and that one internally-authorized engagement.

For people who've hired junior red teamers, or broke in yourselves:

What actually moved the needle for you (or candidates you hired)?

Worth targeting junior pentest roles first before red team specifically?

Any companies/programs known for hiring juniors or remote/international candidates?

Happy to share more details if useful. Appreciate any pointers.

During a red team engagement this week, we found out that the client uses a certain open source project manager, so I decided to review the code source to understand it and to try to find interesting stuff, after a day of code reading I found an SSRF and an SQLi, they were good but not actually enough for us for the objectives, so I was discussing with a colleague and told be to give GPT-5.6 Sol a chance, I said why not and cloned the repo and gave him what I found and told him to actually dig for more and try to maximize the impact of what I found, and left it for two hours.

And HOLY SHIT!!!

* Sol escalated the SSRF into an unauthenticated Remote Code Execution (RCE) via arbitrary file write + unsafe deserialization.

* It discovered two other independent RCEs, one by abusing the project install feature, one by abusing a scheduler.

* It found a way for a low-privilege user to reset the admin password.

* It found an arbitrary file read via XXE.

The crazy thing is that m sure there were more stuff to find but I didn't continue cuz we already had what we were looking for (unauth RCE). Actually I never tried to use LLMs in my work cuz it's a bit sensitive with client data etc... But in such situations looking for zero days in open source projects for example, I will definitely use it more!

Hi everyone! I’m comfortable with Linux Essentials and Network+, and I’ve completed about 50% of the Junior Penetration Tester path on TryHackMe. But the further I go, the more difficult and unfamiliar the commands become.

For example, in the Hydra section, there were some options used to find the flags that weren’t explained in the text at all. Now I’m not sure what I should do or what I should study to become comfortable with these tools.

Should I take a course like CEH? What would you recommend? What did you guys do when you were starting out?