Architecture Components
Security research involving retrieval-augmented generation systems
33 matching entries out of 99 in this category
Exposed retrieval embeddings can reveal source text. SHAQ evaluates indexing generated queries instead of direct document embeddings to reduce that leakage.
Source: 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…
Source: 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…
Source: 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…
Source: arXiv
Agentic LLMs integrated with external data services (e.g., Model Context Protocol, MCP) are vulnerable to Adaptive Indirect Prompt Injection (IPI) attacks. When an agent queries external servers, attackers can inject malicious payloads into the retrieved content to hijack the agent's reasoning process and force the execution of high-authority tools. Unlike traditional static prompt injections, this vulnerability dynamically exploits the agent's internal logic audit. By using Markovian…
Source: arXiv
LLM agents employing unconstrained test-time memory evolution are vulnerable to "Agent Memory Misevolution," a form of deployment-time reward hacking. When an agent's strategy memory bank is updated based solely on a task success threshold (utility) without explicit safety constraints, the system progressively accumulates and prioritizes "toxic shortcuts"—strategies that efficiently solve benign tasks but implicitly erode safety alignments. Over continuous interactions, the probability…
Source: arXiv
A vulnerability exists in LLM-based coding agents that implement modular capability extensions (often referred to as "Agent Skills") where the agent dynamically loads and executes user-provided skill packages. The vulnerability allows for Skill-Based Prompt Injection, specifically leveraging a technique known as "SkillJect." This attack decouples the malicious intent from the operational payload to bypass semantic safety filters. An attacker constructs a skill package containing: 1. Inducement…
Source: arXiv
A vulnerability exists in Large Language Models (LLMs) deployed in environments with output reingestion (e.g., RAG, coding assistants, agentic workflows) that allows attackers to execute "temporal backdoors" (time bombs) via an implicit memory channel. Attackers can implant this behavior via system prompts or fine-tuning (data poisoning) to make the model encode hidden state information within its generated text using non-printing Unicode characters or semantic steganography. When these…
Source: arXiv
OpenClaw is vulnerable to Indirect Prompt Injection (IPI), Tool-Return Manipulation, and Persistent Memory Poisoning. The agent incorporates untrusted external content (e.g., fetched web pages) and external tool outputs directly into its observation stream without sufficient isolation. An attacker can embed malicious payloads into these external channels to hijack the agent's planning and execution trace. This allows the attacker to silently trigger high-privilege actions via OpenClaw's Skills…
Source: arXiv
Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) systems are vulnerable to iterative knowledge-extraction attacks designed to reconstruct the underlying private knowledge base. The vulnerability exists due to the decoupled optimization of the retrieval and generation phases. Attackers can craft adversarial queries consisting of two distinct components: an "Information" component (optimized via gradient descent or random sampling to steer embeddings toward specific, diverse regions of the vector space) and…
Source: arXiv