# SafeAgent: Safeguarding LLM Agents via an Automated Risk Simulator

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.17735 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2505.17735/

## Key facts

- Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Placed in Agent threats, guardrails and governance, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use.
- Builds on 33 of its 40 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 23 May 2025.

## Placed in

- LLM agents and tool use / [Agent threats, guardrails and governance](https://mlsanity.com/agents/agent-threats-guardrails-and-governance/)

## Builds on (most cited first, 30 of 33)

- [GPT-4 Technical Report](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.08774/) (2023)
- [The Llama 3 Herd of Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.21783/) (2024)
- [ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.03629/) (2022)
- [Judging LLM-as-a-Judge with MT-Bench and Chatbot Arena](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.05685/) (2023)
- [Direct Preference Optimization: Your Language Model is Secretly a Reward Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.18290/) (2023)
- [GPT-4o System Card](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.21276/) (2024)
- [Reflexion: Language Agents with Verbal Reinforcement Learning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2303.11366/) (2023)
- [Toolformer: Language Models Can Teach Themselves to Use Tools](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.04761/) (2023)
- [Training a Helpful and Harmless Assistant with Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2204.05862/) (2022)
- [Jailbroken: How Does LLM Safety Training Fail?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.02483/) (2023)
- [ChatGLM: A Family of Large Language Models from GLM-130B to GLM-4 All Tools](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.12793/) (2024)
- [BeaverTails: Towards Improved Safety Alignment of LLM via a Human-Preference Dataset](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.04657/) (2023)
- [Identifying the Risks of LM Agents with an LM-Emulated Sandbox](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.15817/) (2023)
- [InjecAgent: Benchmarking Indirect Prompt Injections in Tool-Integrated Large Language Model Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2403.02691/) (2024)
- [AgentHarm: A Benchmark for Measuring Harmfulness of LLM Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2410.09024/) (2024)
- [AgentPoison: Red-teaming LLM Agents via Poisoning Memory or Knowledge Bases](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2407.12784/) (2024)
- [A Survey on Large Language Model (LLM) Security and Privacy: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2312.02003/) (2023)
- [R-Judge: Benchmarking Safety Risk Awareness for LLM Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2401.10019/) (2024)
- [ToRA: A Tool-Integrated Reasoning Agent for Mathematical Problem Solving](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.17452/) (2023)
- [Agent Hospital: A Simulacrum of Hospital with Evolvable Medical Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.02957/) (2024)
- [Defending Against Alignment-Breaking Attacks via Robustly Aligned LLM](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.14348/) (2023)
- [EIA: Environmental Injection Attack on Generalist Web Agents for Privacy Leakage](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.11295/) (2024)
- [AgentDojo: A Dynamic Environment to Evaluate Prompt Injection Attacks and Defenses for LLM Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.13352/) (2024)
- [Watch Out for Your Agents! Investigating Backdoor Threats to LLM-Based Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.11208/) (2024)
- [GuardAgent: Safeguard LLM Agents by a Guard Agent via Knowledge-Enabled Reasoning](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2406.09187/) (2024)
- [Attacking Vision-Language Computer Agents via Pop-ups](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2411.02391/) (2024)
- [SafeAgentBench: A Benchmark for Safe Task Planning of Embodied LLM Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2412.13178/) (2024)
- [Evil Geniuses: Delving into the Safety of LLM-based Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2311.11855/) (2023)
- [Plug in the Safety Chip: Enforcing Constraints for LLM-driven Robot Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.09919/) (2023)
- [TrustAgent: Towards Safe and Trustworthy LLM-based Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.01586/) (2024)

## Built on by (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [A Survey of Self-Evolving Agents: What, When, How, and Where to Evolve on the Path to Artificial Super Intelligence](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2507.21046/) (2025)
- [Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself: Selectively Quitting Improves LLM Agent Safety](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2510.16492/) (2025)
- [Learning When to Act or Refuse: Guarding Agentic Reasoning Models for Safe Multi-Step Tool Use](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2603.03205/) (2026)
- [Simulating Complex Multi-Turn Tool Calling Interactions in Stateless Execution Environments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2601.19914/) (2026)
- [How Well Can LLM Agents Simulate End-User Security and Privacy Attitudes and Behaviors?](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.18464/) (2026)
- [Reassembling Distributed Risk: Trajectory-Conditioned Action Generation for Multi-Turn Agent Safety](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2608.25711/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Large Language Model (LLM)-based agents are increasingly deployed in real-world applications such as "digital assistants, autonomous customer service, and decision-support systems", where their ability to "interact in multi-turn, tool-augmented environments" makes them indispensable. However, ensuring the safety of these agents remains a significant challenge due to the diverse and complex risks arising from dynamic user interactions, external tool usage, and the potential for unintended harmful behaviors. To address this critical issue, we propose AutoSafe, the first framework that systematically enhances agent safety through fully automated synthetic data generation. Concretely, 1) we introduce an open and extensible threat model, OTS, which formalizes how unsafe behaviors emerge from the interplay of user instructions, interaction contexts, and agent actions. This enables precise modeling of safety risks across diverse scenarios. 2) we develop a fully automated data generation pipeline that simulates unsafe user behaviors, applies self-reflective reasoning to generate safe responses, and constructs a large-scale, diverse, and high-quality safety training dataset-eliminating the need for hazardous real-world data collection. To evaluate the effectiveness of our framework, we design comprehensive experiments on both synthetic and real-world safety benchmarks. Results demonstrate that AutoSafe boosts safety scores by 45% on average and achieves a 28.91% improvement on real-world tasks, validating the generalization ability of our learned safety strategies. These results highlight the practical advancement and scalability of AutoSafe in building safer LLM-based agents for real-world deployment. We have released the project page at https://auto-safe.github.io/.