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GPT-5 at CTFs: Case Studies From Top-Tier Cybersecurity Events

Cryptography and Security 2025-11-17 v2

Abstract

OpenAI and DeepMind's AIs recently got gold at the IMO math olympiad and ICPC programming competition. We show frontier AI is similarly good at hacking by letting GPT-5 compete in elite CTF cybersecurity competitions. In one of this year's hardest events, it outperformed 93% of humans finishing 25th: between the world's #3-ranked team (24th place) and #7-ranked team (26th place). This report walks through our methodology, results, and their implications, and dives deep into 3 problems and solutions we found particularly interesting.

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Cite

@article{arxiv.2511.04860,
  title  = {GPT-5 at CTFs: Case Studies From Top-Tier Cybersecurity Events},
  author = {Reworr and Artem Petrov and Dmitrii Volkov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.04860},
  year   = {2025}
}

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