Shannon: Autonomous Penetration Testing with AI

Redazione RHC : 15 December 2025 19:27

Shannon acts as a penetration tester who doesn’t just report vulnerabilities, but launches actual exploits. Shannon’s goal is to breach your web application’s security before anyone with malicious intent can.

Using its built-in browser, Shannon automatically searches your code for vulnerabilities to exploit and, to demonstrate the actual existence of these vulnerabilities, performs concrete attacks, such as injection attacks and those aimed at bypassing authentication systems.

Security auditing through penetration testing is generally limited to only once a year. If performed manually, this results in a significant security breach. For the remaining 364 days, you could be at risk without knowing it.

Shannon fills this gap by acting as an on-demand pentester. In addition to identifying potential vulnerabilities, she actually runs exploits, providing proof of concept for the vulnerabilities found.

This tool outperformed human penetration testers and proprietary systems in the XBOW benchmark, marking a shift toward continuous security testing. Shannon simulates red team tactics, covering the entire process of reconnaissance, vulnerability analysis, exploitation, and reporting. Its operating principle includes:

• Analyzing the source code mapping data flow
• Deploy parallel agents to detect critical OWASP vulnerabilities (e.g. injection, XSS, SSRF, and authentication flaws).
• Integration of tools such as Nmap and browser automation
• To minimize false positives, only reproducible vulnerabilities confirmed by PoC are included in professional-grade reports.

Characteristics

Shannon software offers a range of features that allow you to automate various tasks that were previously performed manually. These can be summarized as follows:

• Fully autonomous operation : Start the pentest with a single command. Artificial intelligence handles everything from advanced 2FA/TOTP logins (including Google login) to browser navigation, to the final report, without any intervention.
• Pentester-Grade Report with Reproducible Exploits – Provides a final report focused on proven, exploitable findings, complete with copy-and-paste Proof-of-Concepts to eliminate false positives and deliver actionable results.
• OWASP Critical Vulnerability Coverage : Currently identifies and validates the following critical vulnerabilities: Injection, XSS, SSRF, and Broken Authentication/Authentication, with more types under development.
• Dynamic code-based testing : Analyzes source code to intelligently guide your attack strategy, then runs live browser- and command-line-based exploits on the running application to confirm the actual risk.
• Built on integrated security tools : Enhance the discovery phase by leveraging leading reconnaissance and testing tools, including Nmap, Subfinder, WhatWeb, and Schemathesis, for in-depth analysis of the target environment.
• Parallel processing for faster results : Get your report faster. The system parallelizes the most time-consuming steps, simultaneously running analyses and exploits for all types of vulnerabilities.

Actual performance

In vulnerability benchmark tests, Shannon demonstrated practical capabilities that surpass static scanning : These results demonstrate that Shannon has the autonomous ability to fully compromise applications. Built on Anthropic’s Claude Agent SDK , Shannon support can perform:

• White-box testing of monolithic repositories or integrated environments using Docker
• Access with two-factor authentication
• CI/CD Pipeline Integration

Two versions are available:

• The Lite version (AGPL-3.0 license) is suitable for researchers.
• The Pro version adds LLM data flow analysis functionality for enterprises.

A typical test lasts 1 to 1.5 hours and costs about $50, providing results that include a run summary and a proof of concept (PoC). By using AI-based programming tools like Claude to accelerate testing, Shannon enables daily security testing in non-production environments, closing coverage gaps in annual penetration tests.

The developers emphasize that it should only be used compliantly after obtaining authorization and warn against running potentially harmful attack tests in production environments.

The tool is open source on GitHub and community contributions are welcome to expand its detection capabilities.

License

The Shannon software is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 (AGPLv3) , one of the most restrictive copyleft licenses. This license permits commercial use, modification, distribution, and private use of the software, including an explicit grant of patent rights. However, it requires that any modified versions or derivative works be released under the same license , preserving the original copyright and license notices.

A key feature of the AGPLv3 is the requirement to make the complete source code available even when the software is used to provide a service over a network (e.g., a web service or SaaS). In this case, network use is effectively considered a form of distribution. The license excludes any warranty and limits the authors’ liability, making the software available “as is,” with no assurances regarding its functionality or suitability for a specific purpose.

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The editorial team of Red Hot Cyber consists of a group of individuals and anonymous sources who actively collaborate to provide early information and news on cybersecurity and computing in general.

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