Using ChatGPT in Red Teaming — would anyone do this during a test we hired them for, and what are the risks?

Public models won't generate zero-day exploits directly anyway because of safety filters. What consultants mostly do is refactor known code structures to bypass detection mechanisms. Pasting company code into cloud services—outside of local, air-gapped models—is an unacceptable vulnerability.

During a 120,000 TL pentest we commissioned last month, we caught an engineer pasting internal network error logs into a public AI tool via our network traffic monitoring. We stopped the test immediately and terminated the contract. Monitoring outbound data leaks from the audit team unfortunately falls on the client now.

You have to appreciate their honesty for admitting they use AI, but asking for 160,000 TL just to outsource most of the work to a bot with canned prompts is a total rip-off. The whole point of Red Teaming is creative human intelligence; automated scanners already run standard template attacks anyway.

Having AI analyze the target company and then invoicing it as Red Team consulting is a lucrative gig. When they deliver the report, watch out for the phrasing—make sure they didn't just copy-paste generic bot responses straight into the findings.

if theyre using air-gapped models running on local servers theres no issue but if theyre sending data to an external cloud then confidentiality is gone. make sure your contract has heavy penalties for that.

Under the Kişisel Verilerin Korunması Kanunu and information security standards, transferring employee or customer data obtained during testing to AI platforms hosted on foreign servers constitutes a clear regulatory violation. This could expose your company to administrative fines.

Your concern is entirely justified. Be sure to request a test methodology document from any bidding firms. Demand that they formally commit in writing to which tools they use at what stages and with what data security measures in place. A professional firm will not hesitate to document this.

I think it's hard to be that definitive about red team chatgpt. Forgotten test environments are more often the entry point than live systems.

Processes without records never improve, because you don't know what to fix. Proven by experience.

same here.

Quick summary for newcomers: If it's your first time, start small; scaling comes later.

That's all, sorry if I went on too long.

I'd appreciate it if you shared the outcome. Any unwritten clause becomes a point of disagreement later, as both sides remember it differently.

Hope this helps.

Correct. Payment information changes are never verified through the channel they came from.

When we decide without measuring, we always end up in the same place.

I went through the same thing two years ago. Processes without records never improve, because you don't know what to fix.

Of course, it varies if your situation is different.

I agree, and I'd like to emphasize that. Taking notes for two weeks yields better results than a six-month estimate.

I'll argue the opposite, don't get mad. If you scold false alarms, nobody will report again.

If I were you, I'd go this route.

Generally correct, but one part is missing. If you get three different answers on a topic, the question was asked wrong.

If the notification path is long, notifications don't arrive; missing notifications mean delayed incident detection. Of course, it varies if your situation is different.

noted, thanks.

Absolutely. If I were to add anything: Most time waste accumulates in tasks waiting for approval.

If you have questions, write them; I'll answer as best I can.