The paper investigates how to improve large language model (LLM) based autonomous web agents by filtering irrelevant webpage content. The authors reproduce baseline models on the WebArena benchmark and identify failure modes caused by raw HTML input. They propose DeBERTa‑ and T5‑based retrieval models that rank HTML elements by relevance, fine‑tuned on Mind2Web data, and demonstrate that the DeBERTa model raises the LLaMA‑2‑70B agent’s success rate from 1.97% to 2.96%. Additionally, a zero‑shot ColBERT retriever achieves recall of 0.52 on Mind2Web and 0.47 on WebArena.
By Zhitong Guo, Jing Yu Koh, Ruiyu Li
arXiv:2604. 06367v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Web agents automate browser tasks, ranging from simple form completion to complex workflows like ordering groceries.
By Guruprasad Viswanathan Ramesh, Asmit Nayak, Basieem Siddique, Kassem Fawaz
arXiv:2607. 08147v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Autonomous web agents promise to automate everyday browsing tasks, but inherit one of the web's oldest attack surfaces.
By Corban Villa, Alp Eren Ozdarendeli, Sijun Tan, Raluca Ada Popa
arXiv:2511. 20597v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) agents into web browsers introduces security challenges that go beyond traditional web application threat models.
By Kaiyuan Zhang, Mark Tenenholtz, Kyle Polley, Jerry Ma, Denis Yarats, Ninghui Li
The paper investigates how large language model (LLM) search agents can be manipulated through repeated, coordinated search-result injections, a threat that extends beyond single-page poisoning. It introduces Authority‑Chain Hijack (ACH), a strategy that chains manipulated evidence across multiple sources, achieving high attack success rates on the SafeSearch benchmark. The authors also present Trace‑Guided Strategy Evolution (TGSE), an automated method that refines attacker strategies using execution traces, further improving success rates.
By Xuebin Li, Hanqing Zhao, Siyuan Liang, Kejiang Chen, Weiming Zhang, Dacheng Tao, Nenghai Yu
arXiv:2602. 09222v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Large language model (LLM) based web agents are increasingly deployed to automate complex online tasks by directly interacting with web sites and performing actions on users' behalf.
By Georgios Syros, Evan Rose, Brian Grinstead, Christoph Kerschbaumer, William Robertson, Cristina Nita-Rotaru, Alina Oprea
arXiv:2606. 15609v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language model (LLM) agents increasingly rely on long-term memory to support complex task execution, user personalization, and domain adaptation.
By Zixin Rao, Wentian Zhu, Chan Aristella Lu, Zhaorun Chen, Wei Niu, Le Guan, Bo Li, Zhen Xiang
Web$hell is a unified interface that consolidates various web access methods—search, browser actions, and filesystem interactions—into a single model for large language model agents. It uses a WebContract schema to compile live webpages into addressable information and action objects, which are stored in a WebCache and manipulated through shared operations. Experiments across search, navigation, and research tasks show that Web$hell delivers strong performance at lower cost, highlighting the role of interface design in enhancing agentic web access.
By Sunghwan Kim, Deogyong Kim, Sangam Lee, Donguk Kwon, Dongha Lee
arXiv:2608. 04565v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: LLM-based search agents are widely used for information-seeking tasks, but their reliance on external tool returns introduces a critical security risk: web content retrieved during execution is untrusted, exposing agents to prompt injection and goal hijacking.
By Xuebin Li, Hanqing Zhao, Siyuan Liang, Kejiang Chen, Weiming Zhang, Dacheng Tao, Nenghai Yu
arXiv:2609.36488v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Large language model (LLM) agents have demonstrated strong performance on complex web navigation tasks, yet they remain brittle in real-world settings...
By Dongchan Shin, Xing Han L\`u, Jiaqi Deng, Jay Gala, Tom\'as Vergara Browne, Jaewon Moon, Fengyuan Liu, Alexandre Drouin, Siva Reddy, Alexandre Lacoste
arXiv:2510. 19838v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Autonomous web agents powered by large language models (LLMs) show strong potential for performing goal-oriented tasks such as information retrieval, report generation, and online transactions.
By Shiqi He, Yue Cui, Xinyu Ma, Yaliang Li, Bolin Ding, Mosharaf Chowdhury
arXiv:2509.11250v3 Announce Type: replace-cross
Abstract: Graphical User Interface (GUI) agents are increasingly deployed to interact with online web services, yet their exposure to open-world conten...
By Yitong Zhang, Ximo Li, Liyi Cai, Jia Li