English
Related papers

Related papers: Alignment Contracts for Agentic Security Systems

200 papers

Agentic systems are becoming more capable: agents define strategies, take actions, and interact with different environments. This autonomy poses serious challenges for overseeing and assessing agent behavior. Most current tools are limited,…

Computation and Language · Computer Science 2026-05-22 Asaf Yehudai , Lilach Eden , Michal Shmueli-Scheuer

LLM-based agents are deployed in safety-critical applications, yet current guardrail systems fail to prevent violations of temporal safety policies, requirements that govern the ordering and sequencing of agent actions. For instance, agents…

Programming Languages · Computer Science 2026-01-01 Adharsh Kamath , Sishen Zhang , Calvin Xu , Shubham Ugare , Gagandeep Singh , Sasa Misailovic

Although LLM-based agents, powered by Large Language Models (LLMs), can use external tools and memory mechanisms to solve complex real-world tasks, they may also introduce critical security vulnerabilities. However, the existing literature…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2025-06-02 Hanrong Zhang , Jingyuan Huang , Kai Mei , Yifei Yao , Zhenting Wang , Chenlu Zhan , Hongwei Wang , Yongfeng Zhang

A growing body of work explores how Large Language Models (LLMs) can be embedded in trading systems as agents that perceive market information, retrieve context, reason about decisions, emit tradable actions, and adapt under market…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-20 Yihan Xia , Panpan You , Taotao Wang , Fang Liu , Han Qi , Xiaoxiao Wu , Shengli Zhang

Credible safety plans for advanced AI development require methods to verify agent behavior and detect potential control deficiencies early. A fundamental aspect is ensuring agents adhere to safety-critical principles, especially when these…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-07-11 Ram Potham

As LLM-based systems increasingly operate as agents embedded within human social and technical systems, alignment can no longer be treated as a property of an isolated model, but must be understood in relation to the environments in which…

Security policy enforcement in contemporary agentic systems predominantly consists of embedding natural-language policies within an agent's system prompt and delegating compliance to the agent's reasoning. This approach admits no formal…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2026-05-12 Nils Palumbo , Sarthak Choudhary , Jihye Choi , Guy Amir , Prasad Chalasani , Somesh Jha

Verifying specifications for large-scale modern engineering systems can be a time-consuming task, as most formal verification methods are limited to systems of modest size. Recently, contract-based design and verification has been proposed…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2021-03-26 Miel Sharf , Bart Besselink , Karl Henrik Johansson

The rapid deployment of large language model (LLM)-based agents introduces a new class of risks, driven by their capacity for autonomous planning, multi-step tool integration, and emergent interactions. It raises some risk factors for…

Multiagent Systems · Computer Science 2025-12-04 Rafflesia Khan , Declan Joyce , Mansura Habiba

This paper presents an approach to developing assurance cases for adversarial robustness and regulatory compliance in large language models (LLMs). Focusing on both natural and code language tasks, we explore the vulnerabilities these…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2024-10-10 Tomas Bueno Momcilovic , Dian Balta , Beat Buesser , Giulio Zizzo , Mark Purcell

Tool-using LLM agents must act on untrusted webpages, emails, files, and API outputs while issuing privileged tool calls. Existing defenses often mediate trust at the granularity of an entire tool invocation, forcing a brittle choice in…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2026-05-13 Linfeng Fan , Ziwei Li , Yuan Tian , Yichen Wang , Rongsheng Li , Xiong Wang

Evaluating large language model (LLM)-based multi-agent systems remains a critical challenge, as these systems must exhibit reliable coordination, transparent decision-making, and verifiable performance across evolving tasks. Existing…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-01-21 YenTing Lee , Keerthi Koneru , Zahra Moslemi , Sheethal Kumar , Ramesh Radhakrishnan

Traditional software relies on contracts -- APIs, type systems, assertions -- to specify and enforce correct behavior. AI agents, by contrast, operate on prompts and natural language instructions with no formal behavioral specification.…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-02-27 Varun Pratap Bhardwaj

We propose a resilience-based framework for computing feasible assume-guarantee contracts that ensure the satisfaction of temporal specifications in interconnected discrete-time systems. Interconnection effects are modeled as structured…

Systems and Control · Electrical Eng. & Systems 2025-12-09 Negar Monir , Youssef Ait Si , Ratnangshu Das , Pushpak Jagtap , Adnane Saoud , Sadegh Soudjani

Recent progress in (Large) Language Models (LMs) has enabled the development of autonomous LM-based agents capable of executing complex tasks with minimal supervision. These agents have started to be integrated into systems with significant…

Cryptography and Security · Computer Science 2026-03-04 Federico Villa , F. Betül Durak , Tadayoshi Kohno , Tapdig Maharramli , Franziska Roesner

Agentic systems have transformed how Large Language Models (LLMs) can be leveraged to create autonomous systems with goal-directed behaviors, consisting of multi-step planning and the ability to interact with different environments. These…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-01-27 Judy Zhu , Dhari Gandhi , Himanshu Joshi , Ahmad Rezaie Mianroodi , Sedef Akinli Kocak , Dhanesh Ramachandran

The evolution of Large Language Models (LLMs) into agentic systems that perform autonomous reasoning and tool use has created significant intellectual property (IP) value. We demonstrate that these systems are highly vulnerable to imitation…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-02-10 Liwen Wang , Zongjie Li , Yuchong Xie , Shuai Wang , Dongdong She , Wei Wang , Juergen Rahmel

This position paper argues that enforcing LLM agent safety within a single abstraction layer is not merely suboptimal but categorically insufficient for deployed LLM agents -- a structural consequence of how agent execution works, not a…

Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science 2026-05-19 S. Bensalem , Y. Dong , M. Franzle , X. Huang , J. Kroger , D. Nickovic , A. Nouri , R. Roy , C. Wu

Behavioral evaluation is the dominant paradigm for assessing alignment in large language models (LLMs). In current practice, observed compliance under finite evaluation protocols is treated as evidence of latent alignment. However, the…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2026-02-10 Igor Santos-Grueiro

Ensuring the safe use of agentic systems requires a thorough understanding of the range of malicious behaviors these systems may exhibit when under attack. In this paper, we evaluate the robustness of LLM-based agentic systems against…

Machine Learning · Computer Science 2025-10-08 Jonathan Nöther , Adish Singla , Goran Radanovic