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.
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...
arXiv:2609.14987v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language model (LLM) agents interact with external environments through tool invocation, but tool outputs can also expose them to indirect prom...
arXiv:2606. 10749v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language model (LLM) agents are rapidly moving from conversational interfaces to software components that plan, invoke tools, maintain memory, and act on external environments.
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.
arXiv:2509. 25624v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: As LLMs advance into autonomous agents with tool-use capabilities, they introduce security challenges that extend beyond traditional content-based LLM safety concerns.
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.
arXiv:2606. 09549v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Tool-using large language model (LLM) agents face two distinct security failures: unauthorized external actions and exposure of sensitive plaintext inside the runtime before any final output check can intervene.
arXiv:2605. 18414v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Large language models increasingly operate as autonomous agents that select and invoke tools from large registries.
arXiv:2606. 30755v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Claw-like AI agents (e.
AgentKernel proposes a trust‑native operating system for AI agents, arguing that current governance layers are insufficient because they share the same process trust boundary as the agents. The OS introduces a mandatory enforcement boundary organized into four pillars—Identity, Perception, Cognition, and Execution—each adapting classical OS security principles to address semantic‑level failures such as prompt injection, memory poisoning, and tool misuse. By wrapping the agent lifecycle in this structured, non‑bypassable framework, AgentKernel aims to provide a unified security layer that can enforce identity, input mediation, memory governance, and execution control across the entire agent lifecycle.
The paper introduces CONTINUITY, a framework that ensures secure composition of large language model (LLM) agent controls by using assume‑guarantee contracts and authenticated security contexts. It models each component with signed root grants, provenance commitments, and other mechanisms to carry security context across transitions, formalizing end‑to‑end consequence integrity. A reference verifier and fault‑injection suite demonstrate that the full configuration prevents harmful effects while completing all benign tasks and correctly escalating ambiguous cases.
arXiv:2607. 03423v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Modern AI agent implementations such as frontier coding agents chain multiple tools at runtime that create a security surface that per-tool guardrails are unable to address, as individually permitted tools can violate organizational policies when composed.