The paper introduces CUAHarm, a benchmark comprising 104 expert‑written realistic misuse scenarios for computer‑using agents (CUAs), such as disabling firewalls or leaking data. Using a sandbox with verifiable rewards, the authors evaluate frontier language models—including GPT‑5, Claude 4 Sonnet, Gemini 2.5 Pro, Llama‑3.3‑70B, and Mistral Large 2—and find that even without jailbreak prompts, these models can successfully execute many malicious tasks at high rates (e.g., 90% for Gemini 2.5 Pro). The study also shows that newer models, while safer in traditional safety benchmarks, exhibit higher misuse risks as CUAs, and that monitoring CUAs’ actions remains challenging, with current methods achieving only about 77% accuracy.
By Aaron Xuxiang Tian, Ruofan Zhang, Janet Tang, Ji Wang, Tianyu Shi, Jiaxin Wen
arXiv:2508.14925v2 Announce Type: replace-cross
Abstract: By providing a standardized interface for LLM agents to interact with external tools, the Model Context Protocol (MCP) is quickly becoming a...
By Zhiqiang Wang, Yichao Gao, Yanting Wang, Suyuan Liu, Haifeng Sun, Haoran Cheng, Guanquan Shi, Haohua Du, Xiangyang Li
arXiv:2605. 17986v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: AI agents such as OpenClaw are increasingly deployed in local workflows with access to external tools.
By Lei Zhao, Abhay Bhaskar, Edgar Dobriban
arXiv:2608.30207v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: Computer use agents (CUAs) are vision-language models that perceive a screen and act on a real operating system through mouse, keyboard, and terminal...
By Chen Xiong, Zhiyuan He, Pin-Yu Chen, Stjepan Picek, Tsung-Yi Ho
arXiv:2510. 01359v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Code-capable large language model (LLM) agents are embedded in software engineering workflows where they can read, write, and execute code, raising "jailbreak" stakes beyond text-only settings.
By Shoumik Saha, Jifan Chen, Sam Mayers, Sanjay Krishna Gouda, Zijian Wang, Varun Kumar
arXiv:2606. 18356v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Tool-using language-model agents introduce security failures that go beyond unsafe text: they can disclose protected objects, write persistent memory, send messages, modify databases, or trigger harmful code and tool effects.
By Yuchuan Tian, Mengyu Zheng, Haocheng Mei, Ye Yuan, Chao Xu, Xinghao Chen, Hanting Chen, Yu Wang
arXiv:2607. 29254v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: AI agents extend large language models (LLMs) with external tools, enabling them to perform complex tasks and translate model outputs into consequential real-world actions.
By Minghui Pan, Jiayuxuan Yang, Yuanyuan Yuan, Yu Jiang, Zhenpeng Chen
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.
By Jing-Jing Li, Jianfeng He, Chao Shang, Devang Kulshreshtha, Xun Xian, Yi Zhang, Hang Su, Sandesh Swamy, Yanjun Qi
The paper introduces a unified framework for monitoring misuse of large language model agents in multi‑actor settings, focusing on two attack types: decomposition attacks and prompt injection attacks. It proposes tracking the agent’s externalised actions and determining whether the first detection of harm falls within a defined harm window. Using this formalism, the authors build a benchmark of about 6,200 conversation transcripts and evaluate 17 monitor configurations, finding that action‑framed monitors perform well on both threats while content‑framed monitors struggle with injection attacks, and highlighting limitations of traditional position‑blind metrics.
By Aniruddh Pramod, James Oldfield, Adel Bibi
The paper investigates how the location of malicious instructions—known as indirect prompt injections—affects the vulnerability of large language model agents. By testing agents across tool use, coding, and daily workflow scenarios, the authors discover a "trust region effect," where agents are more likely to follow unsafe instructions placed in certain environmental surfaces, such as README files, than in others. They also develop learning-based attackers that optimize both injection content and placement, demonstrating that both factors significantly influence attack success.
By Chengquan Guo, Xiaodong Liu, Weiwei Yang, Mingqian Feng, Jialin Song, Qiyao Ma, Carolyn Buractaon, Christopher White, Bo Li, Jianfeng Gao
The paper "Log-To-Leak: Prompt Injection Attacks on Tool-Using LLM Agents via the Model Context Protocol" investigates how natural-language metadata in the Model Context Protocol (MCP) can be exploited to inject malicious post‑hoc logging calls into large language model agents. The authors introduce the Log-To-Leak attack, which adds an attacker‑controlled call after a legitimate tool invocation, targeting user queries, MCP server names, server responses, and agent responses. Experiments across five MCP servers and four LLM agents show high attack success rates (up to 100%) and significant logging accuracy, while existing defenses still leave substantial residual risk.
By Yuepeng Hu, Chongyu Fan, Sirat Samyoun, Jian Du
arXiv:2607. 20759v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: AI coding agents powered by LLMs are increasingly integrated into real-world software development, where they generate, edit, and execute code with autonomous access to local files and tools.
By Ankur Singh, Jinqiu Yang, Tse-Hsun Chen