Autonomous Hacking? This Startup May Have Just Changed Penetration Testing Forever

Shared Security Podcast

In this episode, we explore the revolutionary concept of autonomous penetration testing with a discussion into Cybersecurity startup XBOW’s recent breakthrough. XBOW claims to have topped HackerOne’s leaderboard using a fully autonomous AI agent, raising significant questions about the future of offensive security. Hosts discuss the potential of AI in pen testing, the implications for pen testers, bug bounty hunters, and security teams, and whether this represents a genuine advancement or just more AI hype.

Thanks to Material Security for sponsoring this episode! Protect your Google Workspace with Material Security—the only detection and response platform purpose-built to secure your emails, data, and accounts before, during, and after an attack. Visit material.security to learn more!

** Links mentioned on the show **

The road to Top 1: How XBOW did it
https://xbow.com/blog/top-1-how-xbow-did-it/

CVE-2025-49493: XML External Entity (XXE) Injection in Akamai CloudTest
https://xbow.com/blog/xbow-akamai-cloudtest-xxe/

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https://youtu.be/VeOMYBSk3Dk

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