# Perplexity finds CTF-style flag hunting misses real security boundaries for AI agents

> Original title: We found that while CTF challenges are common in security red-teaming, asking agents to “find the flag” can waste effort on tasks that do...

- Source: Perplexity
- Published: 2026-11-11T18:21:41.000Z
- Bad Influence: https://badinfluence.news/items/aeo8yorzs6dyosqv6bwczcspx
- Original: https://x.com/perplexity_ai/status/2120582753473499587

## Summary

Perplexity says asking security red-teaming agents to "find the flag" can waste effort on tasks that do not test the target security boundary. It also reports that security-specific model training did not guarantee better results on its tasks.

## Post

We found that while CTF challenges are common in security red-teaming, asking agents to “find the flag” can waste effort on tasks that don’t actually test the target security boundary.

Security-specific model training also didn't guarantee better results on our tasks.