ActGov is a runtime enforcement framework that validates each action proposed by a large language model (LLM) agent before it interacts with external tools, ensuring that actions stay within task‑scoped authorization boundaries and comply with dynamically constructed policies. It builds policies from tool specifications, benign tasks, and failure traces, verifying updates via SMT‑based counterexample checking. In evaluations on AgentDojo and AgentDyn benchmarks, ActGov consistently reduces indirect prompt‑injection attack success while maintaining task utility, outperforming existing defenses.
By Kaiyuan Zhang, Yuke Peng, Ke Jiang, Yinqian Zhang
Large language model (LLM) agents increasingly execute long-horizon workflows through external tools, allowing untrusted outputs to influence subsequent actions and exceed user authorization. Existing...
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:2512.11147v2 Announce Type: replace-cross
Abstract: AI agents are increasingly granted autonomous access to sensitive user data and third-party services, making effective permission management...
By Jinhao Zhu, Xiao Huang, Kevin Tseng, Gil Vernik, Shishir G. Patil, Vivian Fang, Raluca Ada Popa
The paper introduces the Secret-Use Delegation Protocol (SUDP), a method for agentic systems to perform user-authorized operations without granting reusable authority to untrusted requesters. It formalizes the Agent Secret Use (ASU) problem, outlines seven required security properties, and demonstrates that SUDP satisfies six of them under standard cryptographic assumptions, with the remaining property addressed via hardware-rooted runtime composition. A reference implementation shows minimal overhead for mediated calls.
By Xiaohang Yu, Hejia Geng, Xinmeng Zeng, William Knottenbelt
The paper introduces AuthorizationBench, a benchmark designed to evaluate whether large language model (LLM) agents act within the scope of user authorization when acting on their behalf. The benchmark comprises 286 executable tasks across ten application domains, covering situational triggers, presence or absence of direct harmful consequences, and varying reasoning effort. In experiments with four models and multiple agent harnesses, agents violated authorization in 19.2% of trajectories, with rates ranging from 10.5% to 26.6% across configurations, and increased reasoning effort did not substantially reduce these violations.
By Zhiping Zhang, Franklin Mingzhe Li, Zihao Huang, Tianshi Li
arXiv:2606. 22916v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: AI agents increasingly act through external tools: they read private data, construct structured payloads, submit write requests, export records, and coordinate workflows across application boundaries.
By Genliang Zhu, Chu Wang
arXiv:2609.37196v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: Tool-using LLM agents remain vulnerable to indirect prompt injection because trusted instructions and untrusted observations share one context, allow...
By Yanjie Li, Xiangyu He, Xuelong Dai, Bin Xiao
arXiv:2606. 30755v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Claw-like AI agents (e.
By Peizhi Niu, Wenjie Qu, Shangding Gu, Tianneng Shi, Yuankai Li, Ahmad Tawaha, Hend Alzahrani, Vincent Siu, Boyi Li, Chenguang Wang, Jiaheng Zhang, Basel Alomair, Ming Jin, Muhao Chen, Chi Wang, Costas Spanos, Dawn Song
arXiv:2610.16838v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: As language-model agents write code, move money and change records on behalf of users, deciding whether an action is authorized has become a central sa...
By Huihao Jing, Shaojin Chen, Wenbin Hu, Yuxuan Liu, Haochen Shi, Zhongwei Xie, Haoran Li, Yangqiu Song
The paper introduces SARA, a framework that separates action induction from runtime authorization in tool‑augmented LLM agents. By treating these as distinct roles, SARA uses an Action Probe to record action provenance and only authorizes tool calls that align with the user objective and past successful executions. Experiments on AgentDojo and AgentDyn show that SARA reduces action‑to‑side‑effect risk to below 0.63% while preserving task performance.
By Xiaokun Guo, Zhen Xu, Dongdong Huo, Yanqiu Zhang, Wei Wang, Qinfu Yang, Dongjin Yu, Yu Wang
arXiv:2608. 09476v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Cowork agents may complete benign tasks while disclosing protected data, manipulating unauthorized state, invocate unauthorized API.
By Hongwei Yao, Yiming Liu, Meihui Chen, Jieling Chen, Zikun Chen, Yiling He, Wangze Ni, Cong Wang, Kui Ren