Firewalls to Secure Dynamic LLM Agentic Networks
On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Agent threats, guardrails and governance
Abstract (arXiv)
The emergence of agent-to-agent communication protocols mirrors the early internet: powerful connectivity with minimal security infrastructure. When AI agents communicate on behalf of users, every message crosses a trust boundary where the user's personal data and the external agent's unconstrained language each present distinct risks. We address both through a dual-firewall architecture grounded in a unifying principle: each task defines a context, and both sides of the communication carry information far exceeding what that context requires. Our firewalls act as projections onto the task context, allowing only contextually appropriate content to cross each boundary. The Language Converter Firewall projects incoming messages onto a closed, domain-specific, structured protocol; an external agent's message is converted to validated fields while persuasive framing, urgency tactics, and embedded instructions are structurally eliminated through deterministic verification. This replaces the asymmetric challenge of resisting every possible manipulation with the structural guarantee that manipulation has no channel through which to arrive. The Data Abstraction Firewall projects outgoing information onto the granularity appropriate for the task, rather than applying binary disclose-or-redact filtering, as previous airgapping solutions did. Both firewalls operate in a trusted environment isolated from external input, applying domain-specific rules learned automatically from demonstrations. Across 864 attacks spanning three domains on the ConVerse benchmark, our architecture reduces privacy attack success rates (e.g., from 84% to 10% for GPT-5) and security attacks (from 60% to 3%), while maintaining or even improving task completion quality.
Key facts. Cited by 34 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Agent threats, guardrails and governance, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 19 of its 60 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 3 Feb 2025.
Builds on
19 of 60 references.
Closest ancestors · 3
Same direction, newest first
- 2024AgentDojo: A Dynamic Environment to Evaluate Prompt Injection Attacks and Defenses for LLM Agents19 Jun
- 2024AirGapAgent: Protecting Privacy-Conscious Conversational Agents8 May
- 2023Identifying the Risks of LM Agents with an LM-Emulated Sandbox25 Sep
Other references · 16
- 2016Membership Inference Attacks against Machine Learning Modelscited by 2,221
- 2020Extracting Training Data from Large Language Modelscited by 2,144
- 2023Not what you've signed up for: Compromising Real-World LLM-Integrated Applications with Indirect Prompt Injectioncited by 1,339
- 2022Ignore Previous Prompt: Attack Techniques For Language Modelscited by 760
- 2024TravelPlanner: A Benchmark for Real-World Planning with Language Agentscited by 385
- 2013The Composition Theorem for Differential Privacycited by 290
- 2023Can LLMs Keep a Secret? Testing Privacy Implications of Language Models via Contextual Integrity Theorycited by 218
- 2024PrivacyLens: Evaluating Privacy Norm Awareness of Language Models in Actioncited by 161
- 2023Cooperation, Competition, and Maliciousness: LLM-Stakeholders Interactive Negotiationcited by 94
- 2024System-Level Defense against Indirect Prompt Injection Attacks: An Information Flow Control Perspectivecited by 91
- 2024Get my drift? Catching LLM Task Drift with Activation Deltascited by 61
- 2025Contextual Agent Security: A Policy for Every Purposecited by 55
4 more
- 2024A Scalable Communication Protocol for Networks of Large Language Modelscited by 43
- 2024Adversarial Search Engine Optimization for Large Language Modelscited by 37
- 2024Operationalizing Contextual Integrity in Privacy-Conscious Assistantscited by 36
- 2024Dataset and Lessons Learned from the 2024 SaTML LLM Capture-the-Flag Competitioncited by 20
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Citing papers per year: 2025: 15; 2026: 19.
34 papers.
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- 2025Defeating Prompt Injections by Designcited by 256
- 2025Large Language Model Agent: A Survey on Methodology, Applications and Challengescited by 194
- 2025A survey of agent interoperability protocols: Model Context Protocol (MCP), Agent Communication Protocol (ACP), Agent-to-Agent Protocol (A2A), and Agent Network Protocol (ANP)cited by 98
- 2025OpenAgentSafety: A Comprehensive Framework for Evaluating Real-World AI Agent Safetycited by 71
- 2025Design Patterns for Securing LLM Agents against Prompt Injectionscited by 67
- 2025Open Challenges in Multi-Agent Security: Towards Secure Systems of Interacting AI Agentscited by 66
- 2025MCPSecBench: A Systematic Security Benchmark and Playground for Testing Model Context Protocolscited by 47
- 2025DoomArena: A framework for Testing AI Agents Against Evolving Security Threatscited by 31
- 2025Contextual Integrity in LLMs via Reasoning and Reinforcement Learningcited by 30
- 2025LLM Agents Should Employ Security Principlescited by 28
- 2026The Attack and Defense Landscape of Agentic AI: A Comprehensive Surveycited by 26
- 2025Searching for Privacy Risks in LLM Agents via Simulationcited by 19
22 more
- 2026CaMeLs Can Use Computers Too: System-level Security for Computer Use Agentscited by 15
- 2025Breaking and Fixing Defenses Against Control-Flow Hijacking in Multi-Agent Systemscited by 12
- 2025Terrarium: Revisiting the Blackboard for Multi-Agent Safety, Privacy, and Security Studiescited by 10
- 2026AI Agents May Always Fall for Prompt Injectionscited by 9
- 2026The Promptware Kill Chain: How Prompt Injections Gradually Evolved Into a Multistep Malware Delivery Mechanismcited by 7
- 2026MemPrivacy: Privacy-Preserving Personalized Memory Management for Edge-Cloud Agentscited by 7
- 2026Contextualized Privacy Defense for LLM Agentscited by 6
- 2025LAMeTA: Intent-Aware Agentic Network Optimization via a Large AI Model-Empowered Two-Stage Approachcited by 5
- 2026Toward Secure LLM Agents: Threat Surfaces, Attacks, Defenses, and Evaluationcited by 5
- 2025Towards Pervasive Distributed Agentic Generative AI -- A State of The Artcited by 4
- 2026Enforcing Benign Trajectories: A Behavioral Firewall for Structured-Workflow AI Agentscited by 3
- 2026VeriGrey: Greybox Agent Validationcited by 1
- 2026Alignment Contracts for Agentic Security Systemscited by 1
- 2026SovereignNegotiation-Bench: Evaluating User-Owned Personal Agents In Delegated Bargaining Under Privacy, Consent, Evidence, And Institutional Pressurecited by 1
- 2026It Takes Two: Complementary Self-Distillation for Contextual Integrity in LLMscited by 0
- 2026REDDIT: Forgetting-Resistant Correction of Timestamp Drift in ASR via Replay-Based Distribution Editingcited by 0
- 2026The Balkanization of Execution-Security Research for AI Coding Agents: Isolation, Access Control, and Time-of-Check-to-Time-of-Use Vulnerabilitiescited by 0
- 2026Beyond Handcrafted Security: Towards Self-Evolving Defense for LLM Agentscited by 0
- 2026Persona-Execution Separation: An Architecture Pattern for Evolving LLM Agents under Execution Auditcited by 0
- 2026Confuse the Model, Control the Flow: Understanding and Mitigating Privacy Leakage from LLM Agents with Information Flow Controlcited by 0
- 2026Trust propagation and structural containment in Multi-agent LLM pipelinescited by 0
- 2026Codetta: High-Capacity, Keyless, and Undetectable Multi-Agent Collusioncited by 0
- 2026Codetta: High-Capacity, Keyless, and Undetectable Multi-Agent Collusion24 Sep 2026
- 2026Trust propagation and structural containment in Multi-agent LLM pipelines15 Sep 2026
- 2026Confuse the Model, Control the Flow: Understanding and Mitigating Privacy Leakage from LLM Agents with Information Flow Control12 Sep 2026
- 2026Persona-Execution Separation: An Architecture Pattern for Evolving LLM Agents under Execution Audit27 Aug 2026
- 2026Beyond Handcrafted Security: Towards Self-Evolving Defense for LLM Agents13 Aug 2026
- 2026The Balkanization of Execution-Security Research for AI Coding Agents: Isolation, Access Control, and Time-of-Check-to-Time-of-Use Vulnerabilities7 Jul 2026
- 2026REDDIT: Forgetting-Resistant Correction of Timestamp Drift in ASR via Replay-Based Distribution Editing6 Jul 2026
- 2026SovereignNegotiation-Bench: Evaluating User-Owned Personal Agents In Delegated Bargaining Under Privacy, Consent, Evidence, And Institutional Pressure2 Jul 2026
- 2026Toward Secure LLM Agents: Threat Surfaces, Attacks, Defenses, and Evaluation9 Jun 2026
- 2026It Takes Two: Complementary Self-Distillation for Contextual Integrity in LLMs18 May 2026
- 2026AI Agents May Always Fall for Prompt Injections17 May 2026
- 2026MemPrivacy: Privacy-Preserving Personalized Memory Management for Edge-Cloud Agents10 May 2026
22 more
- 2026Alignment Contracts for Agentic Security Systems30 Apr 2026
- 2026Enforcing Benign Trajectories: A Behavioral Firewall for Structured-Workflow AI Agents29 Apr 2026
- 2026VeriGrey: Greybox Agent Validation18 Mar 2026
- 2026The Attack and Defense Landscape of Agentic AI: A Comprehensive Survey11 Mar 2026
- 2026Contextualized Privacy Defense for LLM Agents3 Mar 2026
- 2026CaMeLs Can Use Computers Too: System-level Security for Computer Use Agents14 Jan 2026
- 2026The Promptware Kill Chain: How Prompt Injections Gradually Evolved Into a Multistep Malware Delivery Mechanism14 Jan 2026
- 2025Breaking and Fixing Defenses Against Control-Flow Hijacking in Multi-Agent Systems20 Oct 2025
- 2025Terrarium: Revisiting the Blackboard for Multi-Agent Safety, Privacy, and Security Studies16 Oct 2025
- 2025MCPSecBench: A Systematic Security Benchmark and Playground for Testing Model Context Protocols17 Aug 2025
- 2025Searching for Privacy Risks in LLM Agents via Simulation14 Aug 2025
- 2025OpenAgentSafety: A Comprehensive Framework for Evaluating Real-World AI Agent Safety8 Jul 2025
- 2025Towards Pervasive Distributed Agentic Generative AI -- A State of The Art16 Jun 2025
- 2025Design Patterns for Securing LLM Agents against Prompt Injections10 Jun 2025
- 2025Contextual Integrity in LLMs via Reasoning and Reinforcement Learning29 May 2025
- 2025LLM Agents Should Employ Security Principles29 May 2025
- 2025LAMeTA: Intent-Aware Agentic Network Optimization via a Large AI Model-Empowered Two-Stage Approach18 May 2025
- 2025A survey of agent interoperability protocols: Model Context Protocol (MCP), Agent Communication Protocol (ACP), Agent-to-Agent Protocol (A2A), and Agent Network Protocol (ANP)4 May 2025
- 2025Open Challenges in Multi-Agent Security: Towards Secure Systems of Interacting AI Agents4 May 2025
- 2025DoomArena: A framework for Testing AI Agents Against Evolving Security Threats18 Apr 2025
- 2025Large Language Model Agent: A Survey on Methodology, Applications and Challenges27 Mar 2025
- 2025Defeating Prompt Injections by Design24 Mar 2025
- 2025Defeating Prompt Injections by Designcited by 256
- 2025Large Language Model Agent: A Survey on Methodology, Applications and Challengescited by 194
- 2025A survey of agent interoperability protocols: Model Context Protocol (MCP), Agent Communication Protocol (ACP), Agent-to-Agent Protocol (A2A), and Agent Network Protocol (ANP)cited by 98
- 2025OpenAgentSafety: A Comprehensive Framework for Evaluating Real-World AI Agent Safetycited by 71
- 2025Design Patterns for Securing LLM Agents against Prompt Injectionscited by 67
- 2025MCPSecBench: A Systematic Security Benchmark and Playground for Testing Model Context Protocolscited by 47
- 2025DoomArena: A framework for Testing AI Agents Against Evolving Security Threatscited by 31
- 2025LLM Agents Should Employ Security Principlescited by 28
- 2026The Attack and Defense Landscape of Agentic AI: A Comprehensive Surveycited by 26
- 2025Searching for Privacy Risks in LLM Agents via Simulationcited by 19
- 2026CaMeLs Can Use Computers Too: System-level Security for Computer Use Agentscited by 15
- 2025Breaking and Fixing Defenses Against Control-Flow Hijacking in Multi-Agent Systemscited by 12
12 most cited of 27 All 27 (JSON)
- 2026Codetta: High-Capacity, Keyless, and Undetectable Multi-Agent Collusion24 Sep 2026
- 2026Trust propagation and structural containment in Multi-agent LLM pipelines15 Sep 2026
- 2026Confuse the Model, Control the Flow: Understanding and Mitigating Privacy Leakage from LLM Agents with Information Flow Control12 Sep 2026
- 2026Persona-Execution Separation: An Architecture Pattern for Evolving LLM Agents under Execution Audit27 Aug 2026
- 2026Beyond Handcrafted Security: Towards Self-Evolving Defense for LLM Agents13 Aug 2026
- 2026The Balkanization of Execution-Security Research for AI Coding Agents: Isolation, Access Control, and Time-of-Check-to-Time-of-Use Vulnerabilities7 Jul 2026
- 2026Toward Secure LLM Agents: Threat Surfaces, Attacks, Defenses, and Evaluation9 Jun 2026
- 2026MemPrivacy: Privacy-Preserving Personalized Memory Management for Edge-Cloud Agents10 May 2026
- 2026Alignment Contracts for Agentic Security Systems30 Apr 2026
- 2026Enforcing Benign Trajectories: A Behavioral Firewall for Structured-Workflow AI Agents29 Apr 2026
- 2026VeriGrey: Greybox Agent Validation18 Mar 2026
- 2026The Attack and Defense Landscape of Agentic AI: A Comprehensive Survey11 Mar 2026
12 newest of 27 All 27 (JSON)
- 2026SovereignNegotiation-Bench: Evaluating User-Owned Personal Agents In Delegated Bargaining Under Privacy, Consent, Evidence, And Institutional Pressurecited by 1
- 2026It Takes Two: Complementary Self-Distillation for Contextual Integrity in LLMscited by 0
- 2026REDDIT: Forgetting-Resistant Correction of Timestamp Drift in ASR via Replay-Based Distribution Editingcited by 0
- 2026REDDIT: Forgetting-Resistant Correction of Timestamp Drift in ASR via Replay-Based Distribution Editing6 Jul 2026
- 2026SovereignNegotiation-Bench: Evaluating User-Owned Personal Agents In Delegated Bargaining Under Privacy, Consent, Evidence, And Institutional Pressure2 Jul 2026
- 2026It Takes Two: Complementary Self-Distillation for Contextual Integrity in LLMs18 May 2026
Similar, not cited
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- 2026Rethinking Agent Security as a Networking Problem
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- 2025A Survey of LLM-Driven AI Agent Communication: Protocols, Security Risks, and Defense Countermeasures
- 2025Indirect Prompt Injections: Are Firewalls All You Need, or Stronger Benchmarks?
- 2026Toward Secure AI-Powered Penetration Testing Agents: Security Threats, Guardrails, and Architectural Perspectives
- 2025ConVerse: Benchmarking Contextual Safety in Agent-to-Agent Conversations
- 2026Securing Agentic AI: From Per-Action Checks to Trajectory Assurance
- 2026Agent-Fence: Mapping Security Vulnerabilities Across Deep Research Agents