A Survey on Penetration Path Planning in Automated Penetration Testing

Penetration Testing (PT) is an effective proactive security technique that simulates hacker attacks to identify vulnerabilities in networks or systems. However, traditional PT relies on specialized experience and costs extraordinary time and effort. With the advancement of artificial intelligence technologies, automated PT has emerged as a promising solution, attracting attention from researchers increasingly. In automated PT, penetration path planning is a core task that involves selecting the optimal attack paths to maximize the overall efficiency and success rate of the testing process. Recent years have seen significant progress in the field of penetration path planning, with diverse methods being proposed. This survey aims to comprehensively examine and summarize the research findings in this domain. Our work first outlines the background and challenges of penetration path planning and establishes the framework for research methods. It then provides a detailed analysis of existing studies from three key aspects: penetration path planning models, penetration path planning methods, and simulation environments. Finally, this survey offers insights into the future development trends of penetration path planning in PT. This paper aims to provide comprehensive references for academia and industry, promoting further research and application of automated PT path planning methods.