arXiv AI

The LLMbda Calculus: AI Agents, Conversations, and Information Flow

arXiv:2602. 20064v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Large language models are increasingly deployed as agents: they plan, call tools, read untrusted data, and act on the results.

arXiv AI
Sep 23

When the Agent Becomes the Kernel: A Systematization of Security on the Path to AI-Native Operating Systems

The paper discusses how large language model agents now act as privileged principals with kernel‑grade authority, yet lack the trusted mediation traditionally required for operating‑system security. It introduces a taxonomy that distinguishes between provenance‑based deterministic checks and content‑semantic checks, identifying a central mediation gap in distinguishing data from instruction and authorized from unauthorized actions. The authors argue that this gap creates an irreducible risk of undetected attacks whenever inputs and actions are not pre‑enumerated, and they propose defenses across runtime monitoring, architectural separation, and authorization while critiquing current evaluation practices. They extend the analysis to AI‑native operating systems where the model itself serves as the arbitration core, outlining design constraints, challenges, and a research agenda.

By Li Zhang, Yang Sun, Jie Shi
arXiv AI
Aug 24

ClawSentry: A Progressive Multi-Tier Security Monitor for Safeguarding Autonomous LLM Agents

ClawSentry is an open‑source, framework‑agnostic security supervision gateway designed to protect autonomous large language model (LLM) agents from progressive risks that can arise at four points in the agent control loop: skill admission, invocation‑time intent, execution‑time effect, and post‑action consequence. It introduces a multi‑tier decision engine—deterministic L1, rule‑anchored L2, and read‑only L3—alongside a First‑Use Skill Package Review (FSPR) and an Agent Harness Protocol (AHP) that applies a single policy across multiple agent runtimes without modifying their internals. Evaluation on SkillInject and the SkillsSafety benchmark shows that ClawSentry significantly reduces contextual adversarial skill risk (ASR) while maintaining high task success rates (TSR).

By Kai Wang, Zeming Wei, BiaoJie Zeng, Chang Jin, An Wang, Xiaokun Luan, Zhixiao Lin, Jingjing Qu, Xia Hu, Xingcheng Xu
arXiv AI
Sep 2

Delegation Without Trust: An Empirical Gap Analysis of Identity, Authorization, and Runtime Governance in Multi-Agent LLM Systems

The paper examines the security challenges of delegating authority to autonomous LLM agents that act on users’ behalf. It introduces a threat model with four adversaries and eight security requirements, demonstrates that current frameworks (LangGraph, CrewAI, AutoGen, MCP) fail to meet these standards, and presents an authorization broker that blocks all identified threats with minimal overhead. The broker is shown to resist numerous attacks and limits compromised sub‑agents to their delegated tasks, and its principles are implemented in VotalAI’s LLM Shield.

By Panduranga Sai Varma Dantuluri, Jyotirmoy Sundi
arXiv AI
Aug 20

One Gate Is Not Enough: Composing Stateful Pre-Action Controls for Agentic AI

The paper investigates how multiple pre‑action controls—authority, resource, and evidence gates—interact in agentic AI systems. It formalizes remediation‑induced control coupling, showing that remediation can invalidate earlier judgments and that the order of remediation matters. The authors propose a remediate‑and‑regate protocol to restore soundness, analyze non‑commuting remediation operators, and demonstrate the approach on a deterministic open‑data artifact with three published engines.

By Gaston Besanson