BlockA2A: Towards Secure and Verifiable Agent-to-Agent Interoperability

Fuente: arXiv
Guardado en:
Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Zou, Zhenhua, Liu, Zhuotao, Zhao, Lepeng, Zhan, Qiuyang
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
Materias:
Acceso en línea:
Etiquetas: Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
_version_ 1866908548885118976
author Zou, Zhenhua
Liu, Zhuotao
Zhao, Lepeng
Zhan, Qiuyang
author_facet Zou, Zhenhua
Liu, Zhuotao
Zhao, Lepeng
Zhan, Qiuyang
contents The rapid adoption of agentic AI, powered by large language models (LLMs), is transforming enterprise ecosystems with autonomous agents that execute complex workflows. Yet we observe several key security vulnerabilities in LLM-driven multi-agent systems (MASes): fragmented identity frameworks, insecure communication channels, and inadequate defenses against Byzantine agents or adversarial prompts. In this paper, we present the first systematic analysis of these emerging multi-agent risks and explain why the legacy security strategies cannot effectively address these risks. Afterwards, we propose BlockA2A, the first unified multi-agent trust framework that enables secure and verifiable and agent-to-agent interoperability. At a high level, BlockA2A adopts decentralized identifiers (DIDs) to enable fine-grained cross-domain agent authentication, blockchain-anchored ledgers to enable immutable auditability, and smart contracts to dynamically enforce context-aware access control policies. BlockA2A eliminates centralized trust bottlenecks, ensures message authenticity and execution integrity, and guarantees accountability across agent interactions. Furthermore, we propose a Defense Orchestration Engine (DOE) that actively neutralizes attacks through real-time mechanisms, including Byzantine agent flagging, reactive execution halting, and instant permission revocation. Empirical evaluations demonstrate BlockA2A's effectiveness in neutralizing prompt-based, communication-based, behavioral and systemic MAS attacks. We formalize its integration into existing MAS and showcase a practical implementation for Google's A2A protocol. Experiments confirm that BlockA2A and DOE operate with sub-second overhead, enabling scalable deployment in production LLM-based MAS environments.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_01332
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle BlockA2A: Towards Secure and Verifiable Agent-to-Agent Interoperability
Zou, Zhenhua
Liu, Zhuotao
Zhao, Lepeng
Zhan, Qiuyang
Cryptography and Security
Artificial Intelligence
68T42 (Primary), 94A60 (Secondary)
I.2.11; E.3
The rapid adoption of agentic AI, powered by large language models (LLMs), is transforming enterprise ecosystems with autonomous agents that execute complex workflows. Yet we observe several key security vulnerabilities in LLM-driven multi-agent systems (MASes): fragmented identity frameworks, insecure communication channels, and inadequate defenses against Byzantine agents or adversarial prompts. In this paper, we present the first systematic analysis of these emerging multi-agent risks and explain why the legacy security strategies cannot effectively address these risks. Afterwards, we propose BlockA2A, the first unified multi-agent trust framework that enables secure and verifiable and agent-to-agent interoperability. At a high level, BlockA2A adopts decentralized identifiers (DIDs) to enable fine-grained cross-domain agent authentication, blockchain-anchored ledgers to enable immutable auditability, and smart contracts to dynamically enforce context-aware access control policies. BlockA2A eliminates centralized trust bottlenecks, ensures message authenticity and execution integrity, and guarantees accountability across agent interactions. Furthermore, we propose a Defense Orchestration Engine (DOE) that actively neutralizes attacks through real-time mechanisms, including Byzantine agent flagging, reactive execution halting, and instant permission revocation. Empirical evaluations demonstrate BlockA2A's effectiveness in neutralizing prompt-based, communication-based, behavioral and systemic MAS attacks. We formalize its integration into existing MAS and showcase a practical implementation for Google's A2A protocol. Experiments confirm that BlockA2A and DOE operate with sub-second overhead, enabling scalable deployment in production LLM-based MAS environments.
title BlockA2A: Towards Secure and Verifiable Agent-to-Agent Interoperability
topic Cryptography and Security
Artificial Intelligence
68T42 (Primary), 94A60 (Secondary)
I.2.11; E.3
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.01332