Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Prinos, Kerri, Brush, Lilianne, Denton, Cameron, Wang, Zhanqi, Knox, Joshua, Antani, Snehal, Foltz, Anton, Villaseñor, Amy
Format: Preprint
Published: 2026
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.03034
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866909013258534912
author Prinos, Kerri
Brush, Lilianne
Denton, Cameron
Wang, Zhanqi
Knox, Joshua
Antani, Snehal
Foltz, Anton
Villaseñor, Amy
author_facet Prinos, Kerri
Brush, Lilianne
Denton, Cameron
Wang, Zhanqi
Knox, Joshua
Antani, Snehal
Foltz, Anton
Villaseñor, Amy
contents Agentic systems involved in high-stake decision-making under adversarial pressure need formal guarantees not offered by existing approaches. Motivated by the operational needs of security operations centers (SOCs) that must configure endpoint detection and response (EDR) policies under adversarial pressure, we present a tool-mediated architecture: LLM agents use deterministic tools (Stackelberg best-response, Bayesian observer updates, attack-graph primitives) and select from finite action catalogs enforced at the tool-output interface. A composite Lyapunov function machine-checked in Lean 4 with zero sorry certifies controllability, observability from asymmetric sensor data, and Input-to-State Stability (ISS) robustness under intelligent adversarial disturbance, with two corollaries extending the certificate to any controller or adversary from the catalogs. On 282 real enterprise attack graphs, the claims hold with margin. On paired offensive/defensive telemetry, a tool-mediated Claude Sonnet 4 controller reduces the attacker's expected payoff (game value) by 59% relative to a deterministic greedy baseline, with zero variance across 40 runs at four temperatures. A Claude Haiku 4.5 controller converges to suboptimal game values but stays catalog-bounded over an additional 40 runs, demonstrating that architectural stability is not dependent on the controller capability. The LLM agent's non-determinism furthers creative exploration of strategies, while the tool-mediated architecture ensures system stability.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_03034
institution arXiv
publishDate 2026
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Stable Agentic Control: Tool-Mediated LLM Architecture for Autonomous Cyber Defense
Prinos, Kerri
Brush, Lilianne
Denton, Cameron
Wang, Zhanqi
Knox, Joshua
Antani, Snehal
Foltz, Anton
Villaseñor, Amy
Artificial Intelligence
Cryptography and Security
Systems and Control
Agentic systems involved in high-stake decision-making under adversarial pressure need formal guarantees not offered by existing approaches. Motivated by the operational needs of security operations centers (SOCs) that must configure endpoint detection and response (EDR) policies under adversarial pressure, we present a tool-mediated architecture: LLM agents use deterministic tools (Stackelberg best-response, Bayesian observer updates, attack-graph primitives) and select from finite action catalogs enforced at the tool-output interface. A composite Lyapunov function machine-checked in Lean 4 with zero sorry certifies controllability, observability from asymmetric sensor data, and Input-to-State Stability (ISS) robustness under intelligent adversarial disturbance, with two corollaries extending the certificate to any controller or adversary from the catalogs. On 282 real enterprise attack graphs, the claims hold with margin. On paired offensive/defensive telemetry, a tool-mediated Claude Sonnet 4 controller reduces the attacker's expected payoff (game value) by 59% relative to a deterministic greedy baseline, with zero variance across 40 runs at four temperatures. A Claude Haiku 4.5 controller converges to suboptimal game values but stays catalog-bounded over an additional 40 runs, demonstrating that architectural stability is not dependent on the controller capability. The LLM agent's non-determinism furthers creative exploration of strategies, while the tool-mediated architecture ensures system stability.
title Stable Agentic Control: Tool-Mediated LLM Architecture for Autonomous Cyber Defense
topic Artificial Intelligence
Cryptography and Security
Systems and Control
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.03034