mlsanityData to 7 Oct 2026

Connecting the Dots in Agentic AI Security: A Cross-Dimensional Threat Taxonomy, Evaluation Maturity, and Open Challenges

arXiv 2609.23894 ↗First posted 20 Sep 2026cs.CR cs.AIcited by 0

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

Abstract (arXiv)

Agentic AI extends LLM security beyond generated content to persistent state, autonomous actions, tool use, and interactions with humans and other agents. Existing threat classifications often emphasize individual dimensions, obscuring connections among entry points, affected components, and security consequences. The known threat landscape also differs from the coverage demonstrated by empirical research. Through a structured review of 66 studies published from 2022 to 2026, we introduce T={S, B, P, A}, a cross-dimensional representation linking affected functional or system surfaces {S}, interaction or trust boundaries {B}, violated security properties {P}, and empirically examined architectures {A}. We analyze 22 artifact-backed red-teaming studies and 11 representative security benchmarks to characterize empirical coverage and evaluation maturity. Within the selected studies, evidence concentrates on prompt/reasoning, memory, and tool-mediated attacks, predominantly in single-agent settings. Persistent, Human--Agent, complex multi-agent, systemic, and long-horizon threats receive less coverage. These findings describe the selected corpus rather than establish gaps across all empirical research. Heterogeneous metrics, limited adaptive defense evaluation, architectural imbalance, and incomplete execution-state capture further constrain comparison and reproducibility. We derive 13 open research questions to guide more systematic, architecture-aware, and reproducible security evaluation of agentic AI.

Key facts. No citing papers in the map yet (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Agent threats, guardrails and governance, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 86 of its 110 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 20 Sep 2026.

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86 of 110 references.

Closest ancestors · 47

Same direction, newest first

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  5. 2026LanG -- A Governance-Aware Agentic AI Platform for Unified Security Operations7 Apr
  6. 2026Supply-Chain Poisoning Attacks Against LLM Coding Agent Skill Ecosystems3 Apr
  7. 2026SoK: The Attack Surface of Agentic AI - Tools and Autonomy24 Mar
  8. 2026Memory poisoning and secure multi-agent systems20 Mar
  9. 2026LAAF: Logic-layer Automated Attack Framework A Systematic Red-Teaming Methodology for LPCI Vulnerabilities in Agentic Large Language Model Systems18 Mar
  10. 2026The Attack and Defense Landscape of Agentic AI: A Comprehensive Survey11 Mar
  11. 2026AgenticCyOps: Securing Multi-Agentic AI Integration in Enterprise Cyber Operations10 Mar
  12. 2026AgentLAB: Benchmarking LLM Agents against Long-Horizon Attacks18 Feb
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  5. 2026Taming Various Privilege Escalation in LLM-Based Agent Systems: A Mandatory Access Control Framework17 Jan
  6. 2026A Survey of Agentic AI and Cybersecurity: Challenges, Opportunities and Use-case Prototypes8 Jan
  7. 2026Lying with Truths: Open-Channel Multi-Agent Collusion for Belief Manipulation via Generative Montage4 Jan
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  19. 2025Securing Agentic AI: A Comprehensive Threat Model and Mitigation Framework for Generative AI Agents28 Apr
  20. 2025A Survey on Trustworthy LLM Agents: Threats and Countermeasures12 Mar
  21. 2025Memory Injection Attacks on LLM Agents via Query-Only Interaction5 Mar
  22. 2025UDora: A Unified Red Teaming Framework against LLM Agents by Dynamically Hijacking Their Own Reasoning28 Feb
  23. 2025Why Are Web AI Agents More Vulnerable Than Standalone LLMs? A Security Analysis27 Feb
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  30. 2024The Emerged Security and Privacy of LLM Agent: A Survey with Case Studies28 Jul
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  34. 2024Agent Smith: A Single Image Can Jailbreak One Million Multimodal LLM Agents Exponentially Fast13 Feb
  35. 2024Sleeper Agents: Training Deceptive LLMs that Persist Through Safety Training10 Jan

Other references · 39

  1. 2017Attention Is All You Needcited by 59,932
  2. 2020Language Models are Few-Shot Learnerscited by 32,199
  3. 2020Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Taskscited by 9,160
  4. 2022ReAct: Synergizing Reasoning and Acting in Language Modelscited by 8,355
  5. 2023Toolformer: Language Models Can Teach Themselves to Use Toolscited by 4,072
  6. 2023Reflexion: Language Agents with Verbal Reinforcement Learningcited by 4,064
  7. 2023A Survey on Large Language Model based Autonomous Agentscited by 2,203
  8. 2023AutoGen: Enabling Next-Gen LLM Applications via Multi-Agent Conversationcited by 1,906
  9. 2023MetaGPT: Meta Programming for A Multi-Agent Collaborative Frameworkcited by 1,761
  10. 2023Improving Factuality and Reasoning in Language Models through Multiagent Debatecited by 1,739
  11. 2023The Rise and Potential of Large Language Model Based Agents: A Surveycited by 1,422
  12. 2023CAMEL: Communicative Agents for "Mind" Exploration of Large Language Model Societycited by 1,348
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  3. 2023ChatDev: Communicative Agents for Software Developmentcited by 893
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  5. 2024Alignment faking in large language modelscited by 316
  6. 2024Personal LLM Agents: Insights and Survey about the Capability, Efficiency and Securitycited by 257
  7. 2024AI Agents Under Threat: A Survey of Key Security Challenges and Future Pathwayscited by 122
  8. 2025H-CoT: Hijacking the Chain-of-Thought Safety Reasoning Mechanism to Jailbreak Large Reasoning Models, Including OpenAI o1/o3, DeepSeek-R1, and Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinkingcited by 94
  9. 2024On the Resilience of LLM-Based Multi-Agent Collaboration with Faulty Agentscited by 92
  10. 2024Follow My Instruction and Spill the Beans: Scalable Data Extraction from Retrieval-Augmented Generation Systemscited by 76
  11. 2024BadChain: Backdoor Chain-of-Thought Prompting for Large Language Modelscited by 74
  12. 2024MultiAgent Collaboration Attack: Investigating Adversarial Attacks in Large Language Model Collaborations via Debatecited by 54
  13. 2025Demonstrating specification gaming in reasoning modelscited by 48
  14. 2025ShadowCoT: Cognitive Hijacking for Stealthy Reasoning Backdoors in LLMscited by 23
  15. 2025ThinkTrap: Denial-of-Service Attacks against Black-box LLM Services via Infinite Thinkingcited by 22
  16. 2025ETDI: Mitigating Tool Squatting and Rug Pull Attacks in Model Context Protocol (MCP) by using OAuth-Enhanced Tool Definitions and Policy-Based Access Controlcited by 18
  17. 2025When MCP Servers Attack: Taxonomy, Feasibility, and Mitigationcited by 17
  18. 2026Colosseum: Auditing Collusion in Cooperative Multi-Agent Systemscited by 17
  19. 2026Overcoming the Retrieval Barrier: Indirect Prompt Injection in the Wild for LLM Systemscited by 16
  20. 2025Large Reasoning Models Are Autonomous Jailbreak Agentscited by 12
  21. 2026Robust Multi-Agent LLMs under Byzantine Faultscited by 10
  22. 2025From Promise to Peril: Rethinking Cybersecurity Red and Blue Teaming in the Age of LLMscited by 9
  23. 2025One Token Embedding Is Enough to Deadlock Your Large Reasoning Modelcited by 4
  24. 2026Five Queries Are Enough: Query-Efficient and Surrogate-Free Membership Inference Attacks on RAG via Entailmentcited by 4
  25. 2026Voluntary Collusion with Secret Tools in Competing LLM Agentscited by 4
  26. 2026Byzantine Cheap Talk: Adversarial Resilience and Topology Effects in LLM Coordination Gamescited by 3
  27. 2026Shifting from Injection to Interaction: Rethinking Web Security in the Age of LLMs and Beyondcited by 1

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