[2603.22577] STRIATUM-CTF: A Protocol-Driven Agentic Framework for General-Purpose CTF Solving

Computer Science > Cryptography and Security arXiv:2603.22577 (cs) [Submitted on 23 Mar 2026] Title:STRIATUM-CTF: A Protocol-Driven Agentic Framework for General-Purpose CTF Solving Authors:James Hugglestone, Samuel Jacob Chacko, Dawson Stoller, Ryan Schmidt, Xiuwen Liu View a PDF of the paper titled STRIATUM-CTF: A Protocol-Driven Agentic Framework for General-Purpose CTF Solving, by James Hugglestone and 4 other authors View PDF HTML (experimental) Abstract:Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated potential in code generation, yet they struggle with the multi-step, stateful reasoning required for offensive cybersecurity operations. Existing research often relies on static benchmarks that fail to capture the dynamic nature of real-world vulnerabilities. In this work, we introduce STRIATUM-CTF (A Search-based Test-time Reasoning Inference Agent for Tactical Utility Maximization in Cybersecurity), a modular agentic framework built upon the Model Context Protocol (MCP). By standardizing tool interfaces for system introspection, decompilation, and runtime debugging, STRIATUM-CTF enables the agent to maintain a coherent context window across extended exploit trajectories. We validate this approach not merely on synthetic datasets, but in a live competitive environment. Our system participated in a university-hosted Capture-the-Flag (CTF) competition in late 2025, where it operated autonomously to identify and exploit vulnerabilities in real-time. STRIATUM-CTF secured Fir...