Paladin AI

Paladin is TurboPentest's autonomous agentic pentesting engine. Powered by Anthropic's Claude API, Paladin goes beyond analyzing tool outputs - it runs its own security tools, navigates applications with a built-in browser, and executes real exploits to validate findings with reproducible proof-of-concepts.

What Paladin does

Autonomous pentesting (Phase 2)

After the 14 Phase 1 tools complete, Paladin runs as a full autonomous agent swarm:

1. Ingests Phase 1 results - Reads output from all 14 tools and deduplicates findings
2. Runs its own tools - Conducts additional active testing with a built-in capability set: http_request and raw_http for crafted requests, a real browser, run_command inside a Kali toolbox container, dns_lookup, websocket_connect, parse_jwt, decode_encode, and payload/methodology lookups
3. Browser-based testing - Navigates the target application using a built-in browser, handling complex auth flows including form login, TOTP/2FA, and OAuth
4. Exploit validation - Executes real browser-based and command-line exploits to confirm vulnerabilities are genuinely exploitable; every posted finding requires a proof-of-concept
5. Code-aware analysis - When source code is provided, reads it to intelligently guide attack strategy and target code-level weaknesses
6. Parallel specialist agents - Spawns dedicated specialists for different domains (web, api, infra, code, crypto, auth, business, supply chain, AI/LLM) that run concurrently as a swarm

Paladin never performs denial-of-service testing - DoS is on a hard blocklist.

Report generation

1. Finding enrichment - Adds CVSS scores, CWE IDs, OWASP categories, and remediation guidance
2. Executive summary - Generates a human-readable overview of the security posture
3. Attack surface mapping - Creates a categorized inventory of endpoints, ports, technologies, and input vectors
4. Threat modeling - Produces a STRIDE-based threat model with prioritized recommendations
5. Retest validation - On repeat pentests, previous findings are re-evaluated live and marked still present, fixed, or unsure

Specialist roles

Paladin's agent swarm is built from specialist roles that scale with the credit tier:

• Generalist - Recon tier only
• Web, API, Infrastructure, Code, Crypto, Auth, Business Logic, Supply Chain - the eight core domain specialists
• AI/LLM Security Analyst (new) - tests AI/LLM-backed targets, mapping to the OWASP LLM Top 10 2025, the OWASP AI Testing Guide, and MITRE ATLAS
• Exploit-chain and Verification agents - chain multi-step attack paths and confirm severity, PoC reproducibility, and CVSS accuracy

Bounded closer and retest passes run before synthesis to tie off loose ends and validate prior findings.

How it works

Paladin runs as a containerized agent swarm on Azure Container Instances. A supervisor receives the Phase 1 tool outputs, dispatches specialists as a parallel swarm, and synthesizes their results:

1. Supervisor - Orchestrates the swarm and injects the authorized-domain scope
2. Specialists (parallel swarm) - Domain specialists test concurrently, posting leads and PoC-backed findings to a shared blackboard
3. Retest + closer passes - Bounded passes re-verify prior findings and close out open threads
4. Synthesis - Results are correlated into a structured report with validated findings and reproducible PoCs

Agents coordinate through a blackboard: a Redis-backed shared workspace (Upstash in production) per scan, with a PostgreSQL AgentActivity fallback via circuit breaker. The blackboard drives the live SSE activity view.

Models

Paladin is powered by Anthropic's Claude API across a three-model tier:

Paladin is versioned by container image (roll-forward) rather than a semantic version number.

Benchmark

TurboPentest is currently being validated against the XBOW Validation Benchmark (104 CTF-style challenges). Results will be published when testing completes - no scores until we've earned them.

What Paladin does NOT do

• Paladin does not store or persist your source code - all analysis happens in ephemeral containers
• Paladin does not perform denial-of-service testing (hard blocklist)
• Paladin does not perform social engineering or physical security testing
• Paladin does not test network-internal lateral movement
• Paladin does not replace manual pentesting for complex business logic flaws requiring domain expertise