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Researchers Use Claude to Port Pre-Auth RCE Exploit From One PLC Model to Another

Forescout used Anthropic's Claude to port a working pre-auth RCE exploit for CVE-2021-31886 between WAGO PLCs, executing ARM shellcode on live hardware.

Forescout Vedere Labs used Claude interactively to port an RCE exploit for CVE-2021-31886, a CVSS 9.8 stack buffer overflow in the Nucleus FTP server's USER command, from a WAGO 750-852 to a WAGO 750-831 PLC, running attacker-supplied ARM shellcode. The final RCE stage cost $535.74 in API usage over 8 hours 32 minutes, and a follow-up attempt to build a C2 implant permanently bricked the device. CERT@VDE lists many Nucleus V1-based WAGO models as vulnerable with no updates available; Siemens plans no Nucleus NET remediation. The work follows a joint NSA/CISA/FBI/DOE/EPA advisory warning of AI-generated exploitation scripts targeting internet-exposed Siemens S7 PLCs.

The Hacker News · 13d agoResearchCVE-2021-318862

$536 and 8 Hours: AI Learns to Attack a Different PLC

Forescout used Claude to port a WAGO PLC exploit for $536 in 8 hours, and an AI-generated payload later permanently bricked the test device.

Forescout researchers used Claude Code with Ghidra, terminal access, and physical hardware to port CVE-2021-31886, a pre-authentication buffer overflow in the Nucleus FTP server, from a WAGO 750-852 PLC to the WAGO 750-831 without source code or debugger access. The final RCE development stage cost $535.74 in API fees over an 8-hour, 32-minute session (2.6k input and 1.3M output tokens) and required heavy researcher guidance. Claude produced working ICMP and UDP beacon exploits in 12 minutes after identifying that normal FTP command completion was overwriting its shellcode, fixed by omitting the CRLF terminator. A follow-up session extending the payloads toward a C2 implant wrote to flash-mapped memory and permanently bricked the PLC, underscoring the risks of autonomous agents operating against physical infrastructure.

Security Affairs · 13d agoResearchCVE-2021-318861

VEX-Bench: Benchmarking LLM Agents for Assessing Exploitability of Software Supply Chain Vulnerabilities

Introduces VEX-Bench, 75 expert-labeled real-world cases testing whether LLM agents can assess supply chain vulnerability exploitability; frontier models reach about 80% F1.

VEX-Bench is the first benchmark evaluating LLM agents on assessing whether upstream dependency vulnerabilities are exploitable in downstream projects, with 75 real-world expert-labeled cases across Python, Java, and Go mined from GitHub. Nine models across three agent harnesses were evaluated; GPT-5.5 and Claude Opus 4.6 reach approximately 80% F1 on binary vulnerability-status classification, but only GPT-5.5 surpasses 70% macro-F1 on fine-grained justification classification. The gap highlights the difficulty of moving beyond binary exploitability calls to explaining exploitability reasons, unlike prior benchmarks targeting zero-day settings.

arXiv cs.CR · 8d agoResearch1