Experimenting with Claude Code CLI in the Home Lab 🛡️

2026-05-23 · AI Pentesting HomeLab Ludus RedTeaming

I've been wanting to get familiar with the Claude Code CLI for a while now, so I finally dedicated some time to put it to the test in my home lab.

Inspired by some of the cool work I've seen by @alleem regarding pentesting, I decided to see if I could teach Claude to act as an "internal pentester." My goal was to have it generate reports based on the HackSmarter example report format.

The Workflow

I used a Proxmox + Ludus setup to host the LeHack 2024 environment. I built a Kali machine and gave Claude access to it to run commands, train, and validate the creation of a custom NetExec skill.

My Takeaways

The Learning Curve

It was incredibly insightful, though I definitely had to correct the model quite a bit to keep it on the right workflows.

Structure Matters

I realized that Claude performed much better once I created a standardized folder structure including existing scripts. This prevented it from having to "reinvent the wheel" every time we hit a familiar objective.

Security Hygiene

I also experimented with having Claude sanitize my secrets automatically — a massive win to ensure I don't accidentally expose credentials when I git push.

The Verdict

The result was some pretty neat reports, but it required a lot of manual guidance and correction. While AI is a powerful assistant, I think I still enjoy the manual side of pentesting the most.

Reports

I've attached the two reports I generated from my testing of the LeHack 2024 Ludus environment:

Standard Pentest Report

Traditional markdown-rendered HTML engagement report — findings, evidence, timeline, host matrix, and remediation.

View Report →

Operator Casebook

Operator casebook style — phosphor-green CRT aesthetic, Mermaid attack graph, TTP matrix, attack chains, and dead-end documentation.

View Casebook →

Has anyone else been playing around with CLI agents for security tasks?

#InfoSec #Pentesting #ClaudeCode #AI #CyberSecurity #HomeLab #Ludus #RedTeaming

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