Benchmarking Self-Hosted LLMs for Offensive Security

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This article explores the effectiveness of self-hosted Large Language Models (LLMs) in offensive security scenarios, specifically benchmarking local models against the OWASP Juice Shop. Using a minimal harness and basic HTTP tools, the study evaluates models like gemma4:31b, qwen3.5:27b, and devstral-small-2:24b across challenges involving SQL injection, JWT manipulation, and path traversal. The findings indicate that while local models excel at single-step exploit validation—reaching

Published 15 Apr 2026

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Title: Benchmarking Self-Hosted LLMs for Offensive Security

URL Source: https://dev.to/mark0_617b45cda9782a/benchmarking-self-hosted-llms-for-offensive-security-3jio

Published Time: 2026-04-15T05:45:05Z

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# Benchmarking Self-Hosted LLMs for Offensive Security - DEV Community
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Posted on Apr 15

# Benchmarking Self-Hosted LLMs for Offensive Security

[#cybersecurity](https://dev.to/t/cybersecurity)[#infosec](https://dev.to/t/infosec)[#ai](https://dev.to/t/ai)[#llm](https://dev.to/t/llm)

This article explores the effectiveness of self-hosted Large Language Models (LLMs) in offensive security scenarios, specifically benchmarking local models against the OWASP Juice Shop. Using a minimal harness and basic HTTP tools, the study evaluates models like gemma4:31b, qwen3.5:27b, and devstral-small-2:24b across challenges involving SQL injection, JWT manipulation, and path traversal.

The findings indicate that while local models excel at single-step exploit validation—reaching pass rates as high as 98.5%—they falter during complex, multi-step operations such as UNION-based extraction or a
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