arXiv AI

Defensive Sufficiency in a Stackelberg Model of AI Security

The paper investigates how feedback from automated testing, human red teaming, and incident response can enhance AI system defenses by enabling effective repairs. It establishes conditions under which a finite attack surface is defended with probability one, derives completion-time bounds, and extends the analysis to dynamic attack surfaces and generalized repairs. A defender-led Stackelberg game is formulated to determine the least-cost allocation of proactive discovery and reactive repair, revealing equilibrium regimes where the defender may invest in none, one, or both capabilities, and demonstrates through numerical experiments that faster repair can shorten compromise duration without lowering compromise probability.

arXiv AI
4d ago

Learning Rewards in Strategic Games

The paper investigates how to infer agents’ underlying incentives in strategic multi‑agent settings, where traditional inverse reinforcement learning (IRL) may fail to produce rewards that guide optimal play. It introduces the concept of strategic identifiability and shows that learning from a fixed pair of policies can be insufficient regardless of sample size. To address this, the authors propose an active IRL algorithm for two‑player repeated Stackelberg games, combining maximum‑likelihood estimation with experimental design to achieve finite‑sample guarantees on sub‑optimality, and validate the approach in an anti‑poaching scenario.

By Antoine Bergerault, Cyrille Kone, Giorgia Ramponi
arXiv Machine Learning
Sep 10

CoRL: Co-Evolutionary Reinforcement Learning for Adaptive Indirect Prompt-Injection Attacks and Defenses

The paper introduces CoRL, a co-evolutionary reinforcement learning framework designed to defend against adaptive indirect prompt-injection attacks on tool-augmented language agents. CoRL operates in three stages—attacker fine‑tuning, bilateral Co‑PPO training, and defender fine‑tuning—using verifier‑grounded repairs to adapt to changing attack strategies. Experiments on 1,514 executions show that CoRL reduces attack success rates to 0% while improving task utility, demonstrating its effectiveness against adaptive adversaries.

By Boyang Zhang, Qingxin Xiao, Lingwei Dang, Qingyao Wu
arXiv AI
Aug 6

Trident : How to Break Deep Reinforcement Learning Cyber Defenses (Agentic)

arXiv:2608. 04317v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Autonomous cyber defense systems based on Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) have attracted significant research attention, yet remain evaluated almost exclusively against static, heuristic red agents, leaving their robustness against adaptive threats critically understudied.

By Ryozo Masukawa, Ian Bryant, Armita Kazeminajafabadi, Sanggeon Yun, Hyunwoo Oh, SungHeon Jeong, Nathaniel D. Bastian, Mahdi Imani, Mohsen Imani
Hugging Face Trending Papers
Aug 5

Trident : How to Break Deep Reinforcement Learning Cyber Defenses (Agentic)

Autonomous cyber defense systems based on Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) have attracted significant research attention, yet remain evaluated almost exclusively against static, heuristic red agents, leaving their robustness against adaptive threats critically understudied. Meanwhile, recent advances in Reinforcement Learning with Verifiable Rewards (RLVR) have improved LLM reasoning, but their integration into cybersecurity remains elusive due to the absence of suitable benchmark environments and interaction datasets.

arXiv AI
Aug 28

Safety Does Not Compose: Non-Decaying Loop State for Autonomous LLM Agents

The paper demonstrates that safety mechanisms for autonomous large language model agents fail to compose across iterative loops, as trajectory‑scoped monitors cannot detect attacks whose evidence is spread over multiple iterations. It introduces LoopHarness, a system that maintains a persistent, non‑decaying safety state across loops, bounding unauthorized actions with a constant that does not grow with the number of iterations. The authors provide a comprehensive evaluation protocol, including attacks that require cross‑iteration evidence, module ablations, and adaptive white‑box red‑team testing.

By Chenhao Wu, Haoxuan Jia, Yang Liu, Yingguang Yang, Yuhan Lin, Chongyang Zhang, Hao Zheng, Yulin Huang, Jianshen Zhang, Yongzhi Qi, Shang Luo, Kefu Xu, Jifeng Zhu, Bin Chong
arXiv AI
Jun 19

LLM agent safety, multi-turn red-teaming, jailbreak benchmarks, adversarial robustness, safety-critical systems

arXiv:2606. 20408v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language model (LLM) agents are increasingly proposed as supervisory components for safety-critical systems, yet their robustness under sustained, adaptive adversarial pressure remains poorly characterized.

By Hanwool Lee, Dasol Choi, Bokyeong Kim, Seung Geun Kim, Haon Park
arXiv AI
Jul 7

NRT-Bench: Benchmarking Multi-Turn Red-Teaming of LLM Operator Agents in Safety-Critical Control Rooms

arXiv:2606. 20408v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Large language model (LLM) agents are increasingly proposed as supervisory components for safety-critical systems, yet their robustness under sustained, adaptive adversarial pressure remains poorly characterized.

By Hanwool Lee, Dasol Choi, Bokyeong Kim, Haon Park, Seung Geun Kim