Cybersecurity training provider Hack The Box (HTB) has launched the HTB AI Range, designed to help organizations test autonomous AI security agents under realistic conditions, albeit under the supervision of human cybersecurity experts. Its goal is to allow users to assess how well AI, and mixed human-AI teams, can defend their infrastructure.
Vulnerabilities in AI models add to the vulnerabilities already present in traditional IT, so before you angrily deploy agents or AI-based cybersecurity tools, HTB suggests a testing environment where AI agents and human defenders can work together under realistic pressure to measure their cybersecurity capabilities.
How HTB AI Range works
HTB describes the AI Range as a simulation of enterprise complexity with thousands of continually updated attack and defense targets. The platform supports mapping to established cyber frameworks such as MITER ATT&CK, NIST/NICE guidelines, and the Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP) Top 10.
According to HTB, in a recent AI-versus-human capture-the-flag (CTF) exercise, autonomous AI agents solved 19 out of 20 basic challenges. However, human teams outperformed AI agents on multi-step tasks in more complex environments.
The company suggests that AI struggles with complexity and multi-step operations, indicating that human expertise remains valuable, especially in high-stakes or complex tasks.
Testing and closing the skills gap
Companies can use AI Range to validate whether existing security measures work against AI-powered attacks, provide cybersecurity teams with experience with AI-powered threats, and develop more resilient cybersecurity tools based on agent AI. Such exercises could be used to justify investments in cybersecurity to financial decision makers, Hack The Box suggests.
HTB’s AI Range can be used for continuous testing and validation of cybersecurity defenses. According to the company, this is more effective in the long term than static audits or penetration testing exercises, and is therefore closer to the CTEM model (Continuous Threat Exposure Management).
HTB will launch the AI Red Teamer certification early next year with the aim of quantifying the skills needed to strengthen AI defenses.
For now, it seems prudent to think of the cyber scope of AI as part of a layered security and resiliency offering. As AI matures and frameworks like MITER ATLAS become popular, tools like HTB’s AI Range could become standard components of enterprise security programs.
“Hack The Box is a place where AI agents and humans learn to act together under real-world pressure,” said Gerasimos Marketos, Chief Product Officer at Hack The Box. “We are addressing the urgent need to continuously validate AI systems in realistic operational situations where risk is high and human oversight remains critical. The HTB AI Range enables us to do just that.”
Haris Pylarinos, CEO and Founder of Hack The Box, said, “For more than two years, we’ve been developing AI-driven learning paths, labs, and research where machines and humans compete, collaborate, and co-evolve. At HTB AI Range, we’re not reacting to the rise of AI in cyber, we’re defining how defenses will evolve with it. This is how cybersecurity will evolve: not through fear, but through mastery.”
(Image source: “Main Cast” by Tim Dorr is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.)
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