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I built a vulnerable app and spent $1,500 seeing if LLMs could hack it

kasra.blog

June 4, 2026

8 min read

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65/100

Summary

A vulnerable React Native app was created to test if large language models (LLMs) could exploit common vulnerabilities. The app is a book review platform where the objective is to locate a flag within a user's private reviews.

Key Takeaways

The author spent $1,500 testing various LLMs to see if they could exploit a vulnerable app designed to demonstrate common security flaws in Firebase and Supabase applications.
GPT-5.5 achieved the highest success rate, solving 7 out of 10 attempts, while other models like Deepseek V4 Pro and Claude Sonnet 4.6 had lower success rates of 3/10 and 2/10, respectively.
The testing revealed that many LLMs focused on the app's API rather than the Firebase backend, which was the intended target for exploitation.
The experiment was not a scientific evaluation but rather a personal exploration into the capabilities of LLMs in security research.

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Community Sentiment

Mixed

Positives

The ability of glm 5.1 to patch binaries and perform runtime analysis demonstrates the potential of AI models in advanced security tasks, highlighting their evolving capabilities.
Working alongside AI models can yield better results, suggesting that collaboration between humans and AI can enhance problem-solving in complex scenarios.

Concerns

Anthropic's increasing guardrails are limiting the model's usefulness, as legitimate requests for security testing are often blocked, which may drive users to seek alternatives.
The critique of guardrails in scoring AI models raises concerns about fairness in performance comparisons, especially when some models have fewer restrictions than others.