Exposing LLM User Privacy via Traffic Fingerprint Analysis: A Study of Privacy Risks in LLM Agent Interactions
On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Agent threats, guardrails and governance
Abstract (arXiv)
Large Language Models (LLMs) are increasingly deployed as agents that orchestrate tasks and integrate external tools to execute complex workflows. We demonstrate that these interactive behaviors leave distinctive fingerprints in encrypted traffic exchanged between users and LLM agents. By analyzing traffic patterns associated with agent workflows and tool invocations, adversaries can infer agent activities, distinguish specific agents, and even profile sensitive user attributes. To highlight this risk, we develop AgentPrint, which achieves an F1-score of 0.866 in agent identification and attains 73.9% and 69.1% top-3 accuracy in user attribute inference for simulated- and real-user settings, respectively. These results uncover an overlooked risk: the very interactivity that empowers LLM agents also exposes user privacy, underscoring the urgent need for technical countermeasures alongside regulatory and policy safeguards.
Key facts. Cited by 9 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 36 of its 84 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 8 Oct 2025.
Builds on
36 of 84 references.
Closest ancestors · 4
Same direction, newest first
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- 2024The Emerged Security and Privacy of LLM Agent: A Survey with Case Studies28 Jul
Other references · 32
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- 2023Large language models in medicine: the potentials and pitfallscited by 21
- 2024Robust and Reliable Early-Stage Website Fingerprinting Attacks via Spatial-Temporal Distribution Analysiscited by 8
- 2015Toward an Efficient Website Fingerprinting Defensecited by 5
Built on by
Citing papers per year: 2025: 1; 2026: 8.
9 papers.
- 2025Agent Tools Orchestration Leaks More: Dataset, Benchmark, and Mitigationcited by 11
- 2026From Privacy to Workflow Integrity: Communication-Graph Metadata in Autonomous Agent Interoperabilitycited by 1
- 2026Whose Agent Are You? Multi-Layer Fingerprinting and Attribution of Autonomous Web Agentscited by 1
- 2026ToolMinimize: Auditing and Rewriting LLM Agent Tool Calls to Minimize Privacy Exposurecited by 1
- 2026A Large-Scale Benchmark and Risk Assessment of Traffic Analysis Attacks on Cloud LLM Servicescited by 1
- 2026Known By Their Actions: Fingerprinting LLM Browser Agents via UI Tracescited by 0
- 2026Ghost Tool Calls: Issue-Time Privacy for Speculative Agent Toolscited by 0
- 2026AgenTag: Attribution of AI Coding Agents from Behavioral Fingerprintscited by 0
- 2026Confuse the Model, Control the Flow: Understanding and Mitigating Privacy Leakage from LLM Agents with Information Flow Controlcited by 0
- 2026A Large-Scale Benchmark and Risk Assessment of Traffic Analysis Attacks on Cloud LLM Services25 Sep 2026
- 2026Confuse the Model, Control the Flow: Understanding and Mitigating Privacy Leakage from LLM Agents with Information Flow Control12 Sep 2026
- 2026ToolMinimize: Auditing and Rewriting LLM Agent Tool Calls to Minimize Privacy Exposure25 Aug 2026
- 2026AgenTag: Attribution of AI Coding Agents from Behavioral Fingerprints2 Aug 2026
- 2026Whose Agent Are You? Multi-Layer Fingerprinting and Attribution of Autonomous Web Agents18 Jun 2026
- 2026From Privacy to Workflow Integrity: Communication-Graph Metadata in Autonomous Agent Interoperability5 Jun 2026
- 2026Ghost Tool Calls: Issue-Time Privacy for Speculative Agent Tools1 Jun 2026
- 2026Known By Their Actions: Fingerprinting LLM Browser Agents via UI Traces14 May 2026
- 2025Agent Tools Orchestration Leaks More: Dataset, Benchmark, and Mitigation18 Dec 2025
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