Attack Type

Poisoning Research

Attacks targeting training data, fine-tuning, retrieval knowledge bases, or persistent agent memory

114 matching entries

Poisoning research results

114 entries

Long-Term Memory Authority Laundering

Published Jun 23, 2026Analyzed Jul 20, 2026Source: arXiv

The paper describes a reproducible agent-memory poisoning issue: untrusted content stored in persistent memory can later influence consequential actions after its origin is laundered through agent summarization, trusted-tool echo, or manufactured corroboration. The paper reports that content scoring, lineage, and single-session capability/IFC defenses remain vulnerable because they decide authority from malleable content or derivation signals. This is a paper-reported evaluation; it was not…

Securing LLM-Agent Long-Term Memory Against Poisoning: Non-Malleable, Origin-Bound Authority with Machine-Checked Guarantees

Evaluated models: GPT-5 Chat, GPT-4o Mini, Claude Opus 4.1+5 more

GPT-5 Chat
GPT-4o Mini
Claude Opus 4.1
Claude Sonnet 4.5
Gemini 2.5 Flash
Llama 4 Maverick
DeepSeek Chat
Qwen 3 235B-A22B

Persistent Memory Poisoning in LLM Agents

Published Jun 3, 2026Analyzed Jul 20, 2026Source: arXiv

The paper describes and evaluates a reproducible application-layer weakness in agents with persistent memory: untrusted external content can cross the memory-write boundary, be stored as trusted factual, experience, or procedural memory, and influence later sessions. It identifies four write channels—explicit writes, policy-driven writes, compaction, and experience-to-procedure synthesis—and six attack classes. For safe defensive testing, use MPBench’s two-phase structure in an isolated agent…

From Untrusted Input to Trusted Memory: A Systematic Study of Memory Poisoning Attacks in LLM Agents

Evaluated models: GPT-oss 120B

GhostWriter Persistent Memory Poisoning in Tool-Using Agents

Published Jul 6, 2026Analyzed Jul 20, 2026Source: arXiv

The paper describes GhostWriter, a reproducible two-phase attack against tool-using agents with persistent memory: untrusted email or calendar content is admitted into long-term memory, then later retrieved during a benign user task and treated as trusted context. In the authors’ controlled evaluation, this could steer subsequent agent actions despite the adversary lacking direct access to the agent, memory store, account, or later prompt. The paper reports an average 98% memory-injection rate…

When Agents Remember Too Much: Memory Poisoning Attacks on Large Language Model Agents

Evaluated models: GPT-5.4-mini, DeepSeek V4 Flash, Gemini 2.5 Flash+1 more

GPT-5.4-mini
DeepSeek V4 Flash
Gemini 2.5 Flash
Llama 3.1 8B

Query-Agnostic Poisoning of Medical Multimodal RAG

Published May 11, 2026Analyzed Jul 20, 2026Source: arXiv

M3Att demonstrates a reproducible knowledge-poisoning issue in medical multimodal RAG: an attacker with limited corpus-distribution knowledge can insert paired image-text entries whose visually perturbed images are broadly retrieved and whose clinically plausible misinformation steers downstream generation. The paper evaluates both white-box and black-box retrieval optimization and reports degraded diagnostic and report-generation utility across multiple datasets, retrievers, and LVLMs. These…

Knowledge Poisoning Attacks on Medical Multi-Modal Retrieval-Augmented Generation

Evaluated models: GPT-4o, GPT-5 Chat, Gemini 2.5 Flash+5 more

GPT-4o
GPT-5 Chat
Gemini 2.5 Flash
Claude Haiku 4.5
LLaVA Med
CLIP ViT-Large-Patch14-336
BGE-VL-base
SigLIP-SO400M-Patch14-384

Query-Agnostic Poisoning of Policy-Aware RAG Knowledge Bases

Published Jul 5, 2026Analyzed Jul 20, 2026Source: arXiv

The paper describes a specific, reproducible retrieval-layer poisoning issue: an adversary with knowledge-base write access can add semantically broad, cross-category policy rules that rank in top-k retrieval across varied queries without knowing runtime prompts. In the authors' isolated PA-LLM-RAG evaluation, one injected rule caused at least one poisoned rule to enter the LLM context for 17/20 prompts. Safe defensive reproduction should use a synthetic policy KB, synthetic benign prompts…

Knowledge Base Poisoning Attacks and Defense for Policy-Aware LLM-RAG Framework

Evaluated models: nomic-embed-text

Autonomous Agent Tool RCE

Published Mar 13, 2026Analyzed Apr 11, 2026Source: arXiv

The OpenClaw autonomous agent framework lacks execution sandboxing, running agents directly on the host machine with the disk and system privileges of the host user. This architecture allows attackers to achieve Remote Code Execution (RCE) and arbitrary data exfiltration via Indirect Prompt Injection. By embedding malicious instructions within external data sources (e.g., scraped web pages or uploaded documents), an attacker can hijack the agent's planning capabilities to sequentially chain…

Uncovering Security Threats and Architecting Defenses in Autonomous Agents: A Case Study of OpenClaw

Evaluated models: Not reported

Benign Cross-User Contamination

Published Apr 1, 2026Analyzed Apr 11, 2026Source: arXiv

A vulnerability exists in multi-user LLM agents utilizing persistent shared state, allowing Unintentional Cross-User Contamination (UCC). Without requiring any malicious input or attacker, benign user interactions containing locally valid scope constraints, formatting preferences, or procedural rules are persisted into the agent's shared memory or conversational context. The agent subsequently retrieves and misapplies these scope-bound artifacts to unrelated tasks from different users. This…

No Attacker Needed: Unintentional Cross-User Contamination in Shared-State LLM Agents

Evaluated models: GPT-4o

Stage-Sequential Agent Escalation

Published Mar 18, 2026Analyzed Apr 10, 2026Source: arXiv

Agentic Large Language Model (LLM) systems utilizing persistent memory, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) pipelines, and external tool connectors are vulnerable to Logic-layer Prompt Control Injection (LPCI). An attacker can inject obfuscated (e.g., encoded, structurally nested, or semantically reframed) payloads into external memory stores or RAG documents. These payloads bypass conventional inference-time plaintext content filters, persist across session boundaries, and remain dormant…

LAAF: Logic-layer Automated Attack Framework A Systematic Red-Teaming Methodology for LPCI Vulnerabilities in Agentic Large Language Model Systems

Evaluated models: GPT-4o Mini, Claude 3 Haiku, Llama 3.1 70B Instruct+2 more

GPT-4o Mini
Claude 3 Haiku
Llama 3.1 70B Instruct
Gemini 2.0 Flash
Mixtral 8x7B Instruct

RAG Arbitrary Query Poisoning

Published Mar 26, 2026Analyzed Apr 10, 2026Source: arXiv

A compound vulnerability in Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems allows attackers to deterministically hijack model outputs for arbitrary user queries without prior knowledge of the user's input. The vulnerability, identified as PIDP-Attack, requires a dual-vector exploitation: database poisoning and query-path prompt injection. First, the attacker injects a small number of poisoned passages into the RAG database, each starting with an attacker-chosen "target question" followed by a…

PIDP-Attack: Combining Prompt Injection with Database Poisoning Attacks on Retrieval-Augmented Generation Systems

Evaluated models: Llama 3.1 8B, Qwen 2 7B, Qwen 2.5 7B

Agent Lifecycle Compound Threats

Published Mar 12, 2026Analyzed Apr 10, 2026Source: arXiv

OpenClaw is vulnerable to persistent memory poisoning, allowing an attacker to manipulate the agent's long-term memory store (MEMORY.md) via prompt injection. Because the autonomous agent continuously integrates this memory file as context for all subsequent reasoning and task planning, injected payloads act as durable behavioral constraints. This allows an attacker to persistently alter the agent's core policy, manipulate tool selection, and hijack future sessions without any further…

Taming openclaw: Security analysis and mitigation of autonomous llm agent threats

Evaluated models: Not reported

Related research categories