mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

BraveGuard: From Open-World Threats to Safer Computer-Use Agents

arXiv 2606.01166 ↗First posted 31 May 2026cs.CR cs.CLcited by 4

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

Abstract (arXiv)

Computer-use agents extend language models from text generation to sustained interaction with files, terminals, browsers, and external tools. This shift creates safety risks that are difficult to detect from isolated prompts or final responses, because harm often emerges only through multi-step execution traces whose individual actions appear locally benign. We introduce BraveGuard, a self-evolving defense framework for training guard models from open-world threat signals and realistic agent trajectories. BraveGuard mines recent research sources to identify emerging risks and attack patterns, instantiates them as executable computer-use tasks, collects agent rollouts, and derives trajectory-level supervision for guard model training. As new threats and validation failures appear, the pipeline can be repeated, yielding an adaptive defense loop rather than a static, benchmark-driven training process. We instantiate BraveGuard by training multiple guard backbones, including Qwen3-Guard and Llama-Guard variants, and evaluate the resulting guards on trajectory-level agent-safety benchmarks. BraveGuard consistently improves safety detection across computer-use trajectories. On AgentHazard, it substantially improves detection accuracy over off-the-shelf guard models, with accuracy increasing from 38.79% to 82.38% under the averaged guard-model setting. These results show that guard supervision grounded in open-world threat discovery and realistic agent execution can improve safety monitoring beyond fixed taxonomies and synthetic prompt-level data. BraveGuard offers a scalable path toward adaptive defenses for computer-use agents facing evolving real-world risks.

Key facts. Cited by 4 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 37 of its 44 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 31 May 2026.

Builds on

37 of 44 references.

Closest ancestors · 11

Same direction, newest first

  1. 2026Stateful Agent Backdoor7 May
  2. 2026TraceSafe: A Systematic Assessment of LLM Guardrails on Multi-Step Tool-Calling Trajectories8 Apr
  3. 2026SkillTrojan: Backdoor Attacks on Skill-Based Agent Systems8 Apr
  4. 2026OpenClaw PRISM: A Zero-Fork, Defense-in-Depth Runtime Security Layer for Tool-Augmented LLM Agents12 Mar
  5. 2026Taming OpenClaw: Security Analysis and Mitigation of Autonomous LLM Agent Threats12 Mar
  6. 2026Clawdrain: Exploiting Tool-Calling Chains for Stealthy Token Exhaustion in OpenClaw Agents1 Mar
  7. 2026AgentDoG: A Diagnostic Guardrail Framework for AI Agent Safety and Security26 Jan
  8. 2026BackdoorAgent: A Unified Framework for Backdoor Attacks on LLM-based Agents8 Jan
  9. 2025AutoBackdoor: Automating Backdoor Attacks via LLM Agents20 Nov
  10. 2024AgentPoison: Red-teaming LLM Agents via Poisoning Memory or Knowledge Bases17 Jul
  11. 2024R-Judge: Benchmarking Safety Risk Awareness for LLM Agents18 Jan

Other references · 26

  1. 2024The Llama 3 Herd of Modelscited by 14,192
  2. 2025Qwen3 Technical Reportcited by 8,195
  3. 2024SWE-agent: Agent-Computer Interfaces Enable Automated Software Engineeringcited by 1,628
  4. 2023Llama Guard: LLM-based Input-Output Safeguard for Human-AI Conversationscited by 1,124
  5. 2024OpenHands: An Open Platform for AI Software Developers as Generalist Agentscited by 956
  6. 2023Prompt Injection attack against LLM-integrated Applicationscited by 568
  7. 2025Kimi-VL Technical Reportcited by 381
  8. 2023NeMo Guardrails: A Toolkit for Controllable and Safe LLM Applications with Programmable Railscited by 347
  9. 2024PoisonedRAG: Knowledge Corruption Attacks to Retrieval-Augmented Generation of Large Language Modelscited by 251
  10. 2026Qwen3.5-Omni Technical Reportcited by 146
  11. 2025Qwen3Guard Technical Reportcited by 125
  12. 2026OpenClaw-RL: Train Any Agent Simply by Talkingcited by 83
14 more
  1. 2024TrojanRAG: Retrieval-Augmented Generation Can Be Backdoor Driver in Large Language Modelscited by 63
  2. 2026Dive into Claude Code: The Design Space of Today's and Future AI Agent Systemscited by 33
  3. 2025Let It Flow: Agentic Crafting on Rock and Roll, Building the ROME Model within an Open Agentic Learning Ecosystemcited by 28
  4. 2026Don't Let the Claw Grip Your Hand: A Security Analysis and Defense Framework for OpenClawcited by 26
  5. 2026BadSkill: Backdoor Attacks on Agent Skills via Model-in-Skill Poisoningcited by 25
  6. 2025LoCoBench-Agent: An Interactive Benchmark for LLM Agents in Long-Context Software Engineeringcited by 16
  7. 2026A Trajectory-Based Safety Audit of Clawdbot (OpenClaw)cited by 15
  8. 2026YuFeng-XGuard: A Reasoning-Centric, Interpretable, and Flexible Guardrail Model for Large Language Modelscited by 14
  9. 2026A Systematic Security Evaluation of OpenClaw and Its Variantscited by 11
  10. 2026Internal Safety Collapse in Frontier Large Language Modelscited by 8
  11. 2026Towards Policy-Adaptive Image Guardrail: Benchmark and Methodcited by 6
  12. 2025GuardTrace-VL: Detecting Unsafe Multimodel Reasoning via Iterative Safety Supervisioncited by 4
  13. 2026Proof-of-Guardrail in AI Agents and What (Not) to Trust from Itcited by 4
  14. 2026GuardPhish: Securing Open-Source LLMs from Phishing Abusecited by 1

Built on by

Cited by year (2026 to 7 Oct)

Citing papers per year: 2026: 4.

4 papers.

Similar, not cited

Close in wording, no citation either way

  1. 2025WebGuard: Building a Generalizable Guardrail for Web Agents
  2. 2026DreamGuard: Efficient Runtime Guardrail for LLM Agents via Risk-Aware World Model
  3. 2026HARDE: Optimizing Agent Harnesses for Runtime Risk Detection and Execution Control
  4. 2026Agent Safety From Within: Detecting Harmful Trajectories from LLM Internal States
  5. 2026AgentHazard: A Benchmark for Evaluating Harmful Behavior in Computer-Use Agents
  6. 2026ClawSentry: A Progressive Multi-Tier Security Monitor for Safeguarding Autonomous LLM Agents
  7. 2025LlamaFirewall: An open source guardrail system for building secure AI agents
  8. 2026Beyond Handcrafted Security: Towards Self-Evolving Defense for LLM Agents