Out of Sight, Not Out of Mind: Unveiling Latent Attack in Latent-based Multi-Agent Systems
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arXiv
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| Autori principali: | , , , , |
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| Natura: | Preprint |
| Pubblicazione: |
2026
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| _version_ | 1866917538838872064 |
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| author | Wang, Chenxi Huang, Ruiyang Sun, Jiayan Wei, Lei Wu, Yifan |
| author_facet | Wang, Chenxi Huang, Ruiyang Sun, Jiayan Wei, Lei Wu, Yifan |
| contents | Latent-based multi-agent systems replace parts of explicit inter-agent communication with hidden representations, offering a new direction for efficient and flexible agent collaboration. However, moving coordination into latent space may also move attacks beyond the reach of visible-text inspection. In this paper, we study whether latent states can carry attack-associated information that remains effective during clean executions. To examine this question, we introduce a latent attack framework that reactivates attack-induced effects through latent interventions without reusing adversarial text. Extensive experiments show that the resulting latent-only attacks can substantially degrade task performance in clean executions, especially when applied to inter-agent KV-cache handoffs rather than local hidden states. Further control analyses indicate that this degradation cannot be reduced to arbitrary perturbations or invalid generation. Overall, our findings suggest that latent-based collaboration does not remove attack risk. It shifts part of the risk into less observable execution states, calling for safeguards beyond visible-text inspection. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2605_28214 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Out of Sight, Not Out of Mind: Unveiling Latent Attack in Latent-based Multi-Agent Systems Wang, Chenxi Huang, Ruiyang Sun, Jiayan Wei, Lei Wu, Yifan Cryptography and Security Machine Learning Multiagent Systems Latent-based multi-agent systems replace parts of explicit inter-agent communication with hidden representations, offering a new direction for efficient and flexible agent collaboration. However, moving coordination into latent space may also move attacks beyond the reach of visible-text inspection. In this paper, we study whether latent states can carry attack-associated information that remains effective during clean executions. To examine this question, we introduce a latent attack framework that reactivates attack-induced effects through latent interventions without reusing adversarial text. Extensive experiments show that the resulting latent-only attacks can substantially degrade task performance in clean executions, especially when applied to inter-agent KV-cache handoffs rather than local hidden states. Further control analyses indicate that this degradation cannot be reduced to arbitrary perturbations or invalid generation. Overall, our findings suggest that latent-based collaboration does not remove attack risk. It shifts part of the risk into less observable execution states, calling for safeguards beyond visible-text inspection. |
| title | Out of Sight, Not Out of Mind: Unveiling Latent Attack in Latent-based Multi-Agent Systems |
| topic | Cryptography and Security Machine Learning Multiagent Systems |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.28214 |