RTBAS: Defending LLM Agents Against Prompt Injection and Privacy Leakage

Fuente: arXiv
Salvato in:
Dettagli Bibliografici
Autori principali: Zhong, Peter Yong, Chen, Siyuan, Wang, Ruiqi, McCall, McKenna, Titzer, Ben L., Miller, Heather, Gibbons, Phillip B.
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
Soggetti:
Accesso online:
Tags: Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
_version_ 1866913690332168192
author Zhong, Peter Yong
Chen, Siyuan
Wang, Ruiqi
McCall, McKenna
Titzer, Ben L.
Miller, Heather
Gibbons, Phillip B.
author_facet Zhong, Peter Yong
Chen, Siyuan
Wang, Ruiqi
McCall, McKenna
Titzer, Ben L.
Miller, Heather
Gibbons, Phillip B.
contents Tool-Based Agent Systems (TBAS) allow Language Models (LMs) to use external tools for tasks beyond their standalone capabilities, such as searching websites, booking flights, or making financial transactions. However, these tools greatly increase the risks of prompt injection attacks, where malicious content hijacks the LM agent to leak confidential data or trigger harmful actions. Existing defenses (OpenAI GPTs) require user confirmation before every tool call, placing onerous burdens on users. We introduce Robust TBAS (RTBAS), which automatically detects and executes tool calls that preserve integrity and confidentiality, requiring user confirmation only when these safeguards cannot be ensured. RTBAS adapts Information Flow Control to the unique challenges presented by TBAS. We present two novel dependency screeners, using LM-as-a-judge and attention-based saliency, to overcome these challenges. Experimental results on the AgentDojo Prompt Injection benchmark show RTBAS prevents all targeted attacks with only a 2% loss of task utility when under attack, and further tests confirm its ability to obtain near-oracle performance on detecting both subtle and direct privacy leaks.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_08966
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle RTBAS: Defending LLM Agents Against Prompt Injection and Privacy Leakage
Zhong, Peter Yong
Chen, Siyuan
Wang, Ruiqi
McCall, McKenna
Titzer, Ben L.
Miller, Heather
Gibbons, Phillip B.
Cryptography and Security
Artificial Intelligence
Tool-Based Agent Systems (TBAS) allow Language Models (LMs) to use external tools for tasks beyond their standalone capabilities, such as searching websites, booking flights, or making financial transactions. However, these tools greatly increase the risks of prompt injection attacks, where malicious content hijacks the LM agent to leak confidential data or trigger harmful actions. Existing defenses (OpenAI GPTs) require user confirmation before every tool call, placing onerous burdens on users. We introduce Robust TBAS (RTBAS), which automatically detects and executes tool calls that preserve integrity and confidentiality, requiring user confirmation only when these safeguards cannot be ensured. RTBAS adapts Information Flow Control to the unique challenges presented by TBAS. We present two novel dependency screeners, using LM-as-a-judge and attention-based saliency, to overcome these challenges. Experimental results on the AgentDojo Prompt Injection benchmark show RTBAS prevents all targeted attacks with only a 2% loss of task utility when under attack, and further tests confirm its ability to obtain near-oracle performance on detecting both subtle and direct privacy leaks.
title RTBAS: Defending LLM Agents Against Prompt Injection and Privacy Leakage
topic Cryptography and Security
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.08966