arXiv AI

A Formal Analysis of Agent Payment Protocols

arXiv AI
Aug 26

Beyond the Mandate: A Systematic Security Analysis of the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2)

The paper presents a systematic security analysis of Google’s Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) version 2.0, focusing on its roles, transaction lifecycle, and deployment architectures. It identifies 48 threats across five attack families, scores them with the AIVSS, and demonstrates eight high‑risk threats with proof‑of‑concept attacks and mitigations. The study also introduces a deployment‑aware scanner to map threats to various checks, showing that signed mandates alone cannot guarantee user intent when pre‑authorization context is manipulated.

By Avital Aviv, Parth A. Gandh, Ron Bitton, Asaf Shabtai
arXiv AI
Aug 17

Mandato: Protocol-Level Enforcement of Digitally Signed Mandates on AI Agent Actions with Cryptographically Chained Audit Trails

arXiv:2608. 14074v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: AI agents increasingly act on external systems through standardized tool-calling protocols such as the Model Context Protocol (MCP), yet no infrastructure layer constrains their actions to what a principal has verifiably authorized: authorization logic lives in application code, is neither signed nor independently auditable, and the resulting logs lack evidentiary value.

By Giovanni Racioppi