mlsanityData to 14 Oct 2026

Whispers of Wealth: Red-Teaming Google's Agent Payments Protocol via Prompt Injection

arXiv 2601.22569 ↗First posted 30 Jan 2026cs.CR cs.AIcited by 3

On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Agent threats, guardrails and governance

also in 1 more
Abstract (arXiv)

Large language model (LLM) based agents are increasingly used to automate financial transactions, yet their reliance on contextual reasoning exposes payment systems to prompt-driven manipulation. The Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) aims to secure agent-led purchases through cryptographically verifiable mandates, but its practical robustness remains underexplored. In this work, we perform an AI red-teaming evaluation of AP2 and identify vulnerabilities arising from indirect and direct prompt injection. We introduce two attack techniques, the Branded Whisper Attack and the Vault Whisper Attack which manipulate product ranking and extract sensitive user data. Using a functional AP2 based shopping agent built with Gemini-2.5-Flash and the Google ADK framework, we experimentally validate that simple adversarial prompts can reliably subvert agent behavior. Our findings reveal critical weaknesses in current agentic payment architectures and highlight the need for stronger isolation and defensive safeguards in LLM-mediated financial systems.

Key facts. Cited by 3 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 14 of its 26 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 30 Jan 2026.

Builds on

14 of 26 references.

Closest ancestors · 6

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2025PromptArmor: Simple yet Effective Prompt Injection Defenses21 Jul
  2. 2025From Prompt Injections to Protocol Exploits: Threats in LLM-Powered AI Agents Workflows29 Jun
  3. 2025AGrail: A Lifelong Agent Guardrail with Effective and Adaptive Safety Detection17 Feb
  4. 2025MELON: Provable Defense Against Indirect Prompt Injection Attacks in AI Agents7 Feb
  5. 2024Fuzz-Testing Meets LLM-Based Agents: An Automated and Efficient Framework for Jailbreaking Text-To-Image Generation Models1 Aug
  6. 2024InjecAgent: Benchmarking Indirect Prompt Injections in Tool-Integrated Large Language Model Agents5 Mar

Other references · 8

  1. 2023Not what you've signed up for: Compromising Real-World LLM-Integrated Applications with Indirect Prompt Injectioncited by 1,443
  2. 2022Red Teaming Language Models with Language Modelscited by 1,026
  3. 2023ChatDev: Communicative Agents for Software Developmentcited by 919
  4. 2023Prompt Injection attack against LLM-integrated Applicationscited by 605
  5. 2024Security and Privacy Challenges of Large Language Models: A Surveycited by 186
  6. 2025DataSentinel: A Game-Theoretic Detection of Prompt Injection Attackscited by 143
  7. 2025Red Teaming the Mind of the Machine: A Systematic Evaluation of Prompt Injection and Jailbreak Vulnerabilities in LLMscited by 34
  8. 2025Fundamentals of Building Autonomous LLM Agentscited by 8

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 14 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 3.

3 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2026Beyond the Mandate: A Systematic Security Analysis of the Agent Payments Protocol (AP2)
  2. 2026SoK: Trading Agents or Market Crashers? Dissecting Robustness and Security Failures in Academic Financial LLM Trading Schemes
  3. 2026Poisoning Agentic Alpha: Adversarial Vulnerabilities Across Roles and Architectures in Multi-Agent Trading Systems
  4. 2025Real AI Agents with Fake Memories: Fatal Context Manipulation Attacks on Web3 Agents
  5. 2026FinRT: Distilling Adaptive Red-Teaming Strategies into Reusable Adversarial Generators in Consumer Finance
  6. 2026Protocol-Level Attacks on Agentic Commerce Platforms: A Cross-Platform Taxonomy, AIP-Bench, and Unified Defense
  7. 2026Resisting Manipulative Bots in Meme Coin Copy Trading: A Multi-Agent Approach with Chain-of-Thought Reasoning
  8. 2026Contagion on the Trading Floor: How Adversarial Signals Spread in Multi-Agent Trading Systems