The paper proposes universal, tool‑based defenses for large language model agents that use external tools, addressing four types of adversarial attacks: direct and indirect prompt injection, memory poisoning, and backdoor attacks. Two main defenses are introduced: Attacker Tool Filtering, which uses anomaly detection to remove suspicious tools, and Normal Tool Recalling, which restores the agent’s original toolset before planning. The authors also add prompt‑based defenses such as Chain‑of‑Thought prompting and self‑reflection, and demonstrate that these methods dramatically lower attack success rates—often to 0%—across multiple open‑source and proprietary LLMs while maintaining or improving task performance.
By Xiaoyan Li, Yunli Wang
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
arXiv:2606. 15057v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Indirect prompt injection (IPI) is a major security threat to LLM-powered agents.
By Xinhang Ma, Taoran Li, Chaowei Xiao, Zhiyuan Yu, Ning Zhang, Yevgeniy Vorobeychik
arXiv:2607. 25297v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: The rapid development of large language model (LLM) agents has enabled their broad adoption across diverse real-world tasks.
By Ping He, Yuexiang Xie, Yaliang Li, Shouling Ji
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: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:2606. 02302v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Autonomous LLM agents increasingly operate in stateful environments where they access tools, files, memory, and external services.
By Hao Cheng, Changtao Miao, Tianle Song, Yin Wu, He Liu, Erjia Xiao, Junchi Chen, Xiaoyu Shi, Yichi Wang, Jing Yang, Taowen Wang, Jinhao Duan, Mengshu Sun, Peiyan Dong, Xuan Shen, Yang Cao, Renjing Xu, Kaidi Xu, Jindong Gu, Bo Zhang, Jize Zhang, Chenhao Lin, Philip Torr, Chao Shen
arXiv:2601.12449v2 Announce Type: replace-cross
Abstract: AI agents are autonomous systems that combine LLMs with external tools to solve complex tasks. While such tools extend capability, improper t...
By Roy Betser, Amit Giloni, Shamik Bose, Sindhu Padakandla, Chiara Picardi, Lidor Erez, Roman Vainshtein
The paper introduces Attnlocate, a runtime framework that localizes behavior‑guiding instructions within the attention matrix of large language model agents. By treating this localization as an object detection task, Attnlocate uses a multi‑head, multi‑layer attention aggregation scheme and a 1‑D U‑Net to identify spans that influence tool‑calling decisions. The system then adjudicates potential malicious invocations based on the authority of the source, achieving high detection metrics across diverse LLM families and demonstrating transferability to unseen models.
By Yichao Gao, Yumo Zhang, Yunhao Yao, Haohua Du, Puhan Luo, Ruiqi Li, Zhiqiang Wang
arXiv:2606. 00925v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Open agent platforms allow community contributors to publish reusable skills that agents can invoke at runtime.
By Ismail Hossain, Sai Puppala, Zhuoran Lu, Sajedul Talukder, Nan Jiang
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
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.
By Yuchen Ling, Shengcheng Yu, Zhenyu Chen, Chunrong Fang