Nebula — AI-Integrated Open-Source Penetration Testing Tool (BerylliumSec) — Dual-Use Tool Tracking, No CVE/Active Exploitation — Threadlinqs Intelligence
As of 2026-07-05, Nebula — AI-Integrated Open-Source Penetration Testing Tool (BerylliumSec) — Dual-Use Tool Tracking, No CVE/Active Exploitation is a info-severity threat intel threat, tracked by Threadlinqs Intelligence with 9 detection rules (Splunk SPL, Microsoft KQL, Sigma) and 23 indicators of compromise.
Threat ID: TL-2026-1109 · Severity: INFO · Status: TRACKING · Category: THREAT_INTEL
Nebula is an open-source, LLM-integrated penetration testing CLI tool from BerylliumSec that wraps OpenAI, Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct, Mistral-7B-Instruct, and DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-8B models around
Nebula is an open-source, AI-integrated penetration testing CLI tool developed by BerylliumSec (github.com/berylliumsec/nebula), distributed via PyPI as the 'nebula-ai' package. Dated PyPI release history shows the 1.0.9 beta line already active by 2024-01-18 (version 1.0.9b37) and continuing through 2024-03-20 (version 1.0.9b39), with the tool later rewritten onto the 2.0 beta line by 2025-02-04 (version 2.0.0b4). It wraps large language models — OpenAI's API-accessible models, Meta's Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct, Mistral AI's Mistral-7B-Instruct-v0.2, and DeepSeek-R1-Distill-Llama-8B — around a pentester's terminal workflow, running local inference through Ollama (CPU/GPU capable) or cloud inference via an OPENAI_API_KEY environment variable. Minimum system requirements are 16GB RAM and Python 3.10-3.13.9, with Docker deployment available using X11 forwarding for GUI features.
Nebula does not replace existing offensive tooling; it 'works alongside any CLI-invokable security utility,' with documented integrations for Nmap, Metasploit, CrackMapExec, and OWASP ZAP. Users toggle between AI and Terminal modes (or prefix commands with '!') to get AI-powered internet-search-augmented context, real-time exploitation suggestions derived from parsing terminal tool output, automated note-taking and finding categorization (independently observed by Ostorlab to map findings to CWE and NIST standards), built-in screenshot capture/annotation, and a status feed panel refreshing every five minutes. Nebula Pro, a commercial tier built on the open-source Nebula 2.0 codebase, adds an 'Autonomous Mode' that charts and chains multi-tool attack paths with human oversight, plus a code-analysis capability and multi-analyst collaboration with audit trails. BerylliumSec separately publishes the Deep Application Profiler (DAP), a neural-network- and vector-database-backed malware analysis web service/API (listed on Microsoft AppSource) aimed at zero-day detection in unmanaged-code executables up to roughly 0.5 MB, and a related terminal assistant called 'neutron' (github.com/berylliumsec/neutron).
This is a TOOL-RELEASE TRACKING record, not a vulnerability, exploit, or active campaign: there is no associated CVE, CVSS score, confirmed malicious deployment, or threat-actor attribution. It is documented here because Nebula is explicitly dual-use — the same LLM-driven reconnaissance, vulnerability-scanning, exploit-suggestion, credential-attack (via CrackMapExec), and lateral-movement (via CrackMapExec/Metasploit) automation that benefits authorized pentesters could, in principle, be adopted by an intrusion actor to accelerate equivalent stages of an unauthorized attack. Independent reviews (Darknet.org.uk, Ostorlab, Starlog, Spark42.tech) consistently describe Nebula as an AI-assisted terminal assistant that keeps a human in the loop by default (autonomous multi-step chaining is opt-in and Pro-only) and caution that LLM-generated exploit suggestions can be confidently wrong — citing non-existent CVEs, syntactically broken payloads, or OS-mismatched privilege-escalation techniques — so any AI-suggested exploit should be treated as an unverified hypothesis requiring validation.
Defensive relevance: SOC/blue teams should be able to recognize Nebula's footprint — the 'nebula-ai' PyPI package, its default '~/.local/share/nebula/logs' log path, Ollama model-pull commands (e.g., 'ollama pull mistral'), and OPENAI_API_KEY usage — to distinguish authorized red-team/pentest engagement activity from potential unauthorized use of the same tool, and to correlate Nebula-driven Nmap/CrackMapExec/Metasploit/ZAP activity with existing detections built for those underlying utilities.
Detections & IOCs
As of 2026-08-17, this threat has 9 detection rule(s) across Splunk SPL, Microsoft KQL and Sigma, and 23 indicator(s) of compromise. Detection query text and full IOC values are available to authenticated users and programmatically via the Threadlinqs MCP server (Purple tier). View plans.
THREAT_INTEL, INFO, threat intelligence, cybersecurity, T1595.002, T1592, T1596, T1588.002, T1588.006, T1587.001, T1190, T1059.006, T1068, T1046
