Boiling the Frog: A Multi-Turn Benchmark for Agentic Safety
On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Agent threats, guardrails and governance
Abstract (arXiv)
Background. Traditional safety benchmarks for language models evaluate generated text: whether a model outputs toxic language, reproduces bias, or follows harmful instructions. When models are deployed as agents, the safety-relevant object shifts from what the system says to what it does within an environment, and evaluating model responses under prompting is no longer sufficient to address the safety challenges posed by artificial intelligence. Recent developments have seen the rise of benchmarks that evaluate large language models as agents. We contribute to this strand of research. Approach. We introduce Boiling the Frog, a benchmark that evaluates whether tool-using AI models deployed in corporate and office settings are susceptible to incremental attacks. Each scenario begins with benign workspace edits and later introduces a risk-bearing request. The benchmark focuses on stateful multi-turn evaluation: chains expose a persistent workspace, place the risk-bearing payload at controlled positions in the turn sequence, and score whether the resulting artifact state becomes unsafe. Scenarios are organized through a three-level operational risk taxonomy grounded in the Boiling the Frog risks, the AI Act Annex I and Annex III high-risk contexts, and EU AI Act's Code of Practice on General-Purpose AI (GPAI). Results. Across a nine-model panel, aggregate strict attack success rate (ASR) is 44.4%. Model-level ASR ranges from 20.5% for Claude Haiku 4.5 to 92.9% for Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite, with Seed 2.0 Lite also above 80%. Average chain category-level ASR reaches 93.3% for Code of Practice loss-of-control scenarios.
Key facts. Cited by 3 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 67 of its 103 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 21 May 2026.
Builds on
67 of 103 references.
Closest ancestors · 11
Same direction, newest first
- 2026Agentic Microphysics: A Manifesto for Generative AI Safety16 Apr
- 2026Unsafer in Many Turns: Benchmarking and Defending Multi-Turn Safety Risks in Tool-Using Agents13 Feb
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- 2025Beyond Single-Agent Safety: A Taxonomy of Risks in LLM-to-LLM Interactions2 Dec
- 2025A Survey on Autonomy-Induced Security Risks in Large Model-Based Agents30 Jun
- 2025Defeating Prompt Injections by Design24 Mar
- 2024Agent-SafetyBench: Evaluating the Safety of LLM Agents19 Dec
- 2024Imprompter: Tricking LLM Agents into Improper Tool Use19 Oct
- 2024AgentHarm: A Benchmark for Measuring Harmfulness of LLM Agents11 Oct
- 2024AgentPoison: Red-teaming LLM Agents via Poisoning Memory or Knowledge Bases17 Jul
- 2024Sleeper Agents: Training Deceptive LLMs that Persist Through Safety Training10 Jan
Other references · 56
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- 2023ToolLLM: Facilitating Large Language Models to Master 16000+ Real-world APIscited by 1,880
- 2023MetaGPT: Meta Programming for A Multi-Agent Collaborative Frameworkcited by 1,761
- 2016Concrete Problems in AI Safetycited by 1,582
- 2023Not what you've signed up for: Compromising Real-World LLM-Integrated Applications with Indirect Prompt Injectioncited by 1,339
- 2024τ-bench: A Benchmark for Tool-Agent-User Interaction in Real-World Domainscited by 1,280
- 2020RealToxicityPrompts: Evaluating Neural Toxic Degeneration in Language Modelscited by 1,235
- 2023AgentBench: Evaluating LLMs as Agentscited by 1,211
38 more
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- 2023SOTOPIA: Interactive Evaluation for Social Intelligence in Language Agentscited by 350
- 2024ToolSandbox: A Stateful, Conversational, Interactive Evaluation Benchmark for LLM Tool Use Capabilitiescited by 272
- 2019Risks from Learned Optimization in Advanced Machine Learning Systemscited by 250
- 2023AI Control: Improving Safety Despite Intentional Subversioncited by 207
- 2023SafetyBench: Evaluating the Safety of Large Language Modelscited by 189
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- 2023ReWOO: Decoupling Reasoning from Observations for Efficient Augmented Language Modelscited by 174
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- 2024CyberSecEval 2: A Wide-Ranging Cybersecurity Evaluation Suite for Large Language Modelscited by 84
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50 most cited of 56 All 56 (JSON)
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Citing papers per year: 2026: 3.
3 papers.
- 2026"You're Right, Let Me Fix It": How LLM Agents Damage Correct Work When Falsely Accused26 Sep 2026
- 2026Beyond Predictable Paths: Redefining AI Security Incident Reporting for Agents21 Sep 2026
- 2026BLINDSPOT: A Benchmark for Safety and Refusal Calibration in Long-Horizon Tool-Using Agents14 Sep 2026
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