arXiv AI

Beyond Instruction Override: Benchmarking Indirect Prompt Injection with Task-Tampering Attacks

arXiv AI
Oct 28

AgentSentry: Mitigating Indirect Prompt Injection in LLM Agents via Temporal Causal Diagnostics and Context Purification

AgentSentry is an inference‑time defense for tool‑augmented large language model agents that mitigates indirect prompt injection (IPI) attacks. It uses temporal causal diagnostics by performing counterfactual re‑executions at tool‑return boundaries to detect mediator‑sensitive proposals, purifies implicated content, and resumes execution from a sanitized state. Evaluations on AgentDojo show zero successful attacks (ASR = 0%) and an average Utility Under Attack of 76.10%, outperforming baselines while maintaining low false‑positive rates.

By Tian Zhang, Yiwei Xu, Juan Wang, Keyan Guo, Xiaoyang Xu, Bowen Xiao, Quanlong Guan, Jinlin Fan, Jiawei Liu, Zhiquan Liu, Hongxin Hu
arXiv Machine Learning
Jul 14

NetInjectBench: Benchmarking Indirect Prompt Injection in Tool-Using Large Language Model Agents for Network Operations

arXiv:2607. 10490v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Tool-using large language model (LLM) agents are attractive for network operations, but tickets, alerts, logs, runbooks, and ChatOps messages can carry indirect prompt injections.

By Ruksat Khan Shayoni, Muhammad Faraz Shoaib, S M Asif Hossain, M. F. Mridha
arXiv AI
Jul 1

Security--Fidelity Tradeoffs: The Hidden Cost of Prompt Injection Defense

arXiv:2606. 30783v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: We identify a security-fidelity tradeoff in defending LLMs against indirect prompt injection: defenses resist injected instructions largely by suppressing untrusted text, which corrupts tasks that must preserve it, such as translation and document editing.

By Mitchell Hermon, Rahul Gupta, Weitong Ruan, Ekraam Sabir, Haohan Wang
arXiv AI
Sep 2

Will the User Ever Know? Covert Indirect Prompt Injection Attacks on Tool-Using LLM Agents

The paper introduces covert indirect prompt injection (IPI) attacks on tool‑using large language model agents, distinguishing between covert and overt successes. It defines new metrics—Covert Success Rate (CSR) and Overt Success Rate (OSR)—to capture whether users notice the injection. The authors propose ICoA, an attack that steers agents back to the user’s task after executing the injection, achieving higher CSR than existing methods on four target models.

By Yunseok Lee, Yunji Kim, Woojin Lee
arXiv AI
Jun 26

Adaptive Evaluation of Out-of-Band Defenses Against Prompt Injection in LLM Agents

arXiv:2606. 26479v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Recent work (2024 to 2026) has converged on a strategy for defending tool-using LLM agents against indirect prompt injection: rather than training the model to refuse malicious instructions, enforce security outside the model with a deterministic policy that mediates the agent's actions.

By Praneeth Narisetty, Shiva Nagendra Babu Kore, Uday Kumar Reddy Kattamanchi, Jayaram Kumarapu
arXiv AI
Oct 7

APEX: Active Protection at Execution Boundaries for LLM Agents

The paper introduces APEX, an active defense for large language model agents that protects against indirect prompt injection by enforcing safety at execution boundaries. APEX uses an evidence‑gated prevention contract and deception‑based exposure to ensure that only authorized effects, endorsed by the task, are executed. Evaluation shows APEX achieves near‑zero attack success across multiple benchmarks and capability‑unit types, outperforming 13 baseline defenses.

By Xinran Zheng, Xin Fan Guo, Zhiqiang Hao, Fan Yang, Xingzhi Qian, Jiawei Du, Jinfeng Xu, Zheng Xing, Shuo Yang, Xingjun Wang