network security

CTFs in the AI Era

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The Include Security team attended the BSides 2026 CTF competition and observed how effective frontier models have become at solving a variety of CTF challenges. Our team gives a first-hand account of how the winning strategy has recently shifted to prioritizing efficient solve times and orchestration pipelines that can combine the speed of lighter-weight models on easier challenges with a heavy-hitting model’s reasoning capabilities. We also highlight why the success of LLMs in CTFs does not translate as effectively in the arena of professional security assessments.

Misinterpreted: What Penetration Test Reports Actually Mean

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This month’s post discusses pentest reports and how the various audiences that consume them sometimes misinterpret what they mean. We cover why findings in a report are not a sign of failure, why “clean” reports aren’t always good news, and why it may not be necessary to fix every single identified vulnerability. The post concludes with a few takeaways about how the information in a pentest report helps inform the reader about the report subject’s security posture.