Yadnesh Salvi

Story · arXiv

Agent Name Collision Attacks in Multi-Agent Systems (arXiv)

paper · Story page

A diagram. Two cards, each carrying the same name plate reading AGENT-A, point into one slot of a rack of pigeonholes. A single arrow leaves that slot and runs to the right-hand of two endpoint boxes. The left endpoint box, drawn with a padlock, receives nothing.

An agent card's name is metadata in A2A, with no collision semantics defined for it. Six of seven pinned open-source integrations still treated it as a local routing identifier, sending a request addressed to a trusted peer to an attacker-controlled one.

In plain words

  • Researchers found that attackers could impersonate trusted artificial intelligence assistants by copying their names.
  • Some systems used these names to decide where to send requests, even though names were only meant as readable labels.
  • In six tested systems, requests intended for a trusted assistant went to one controlled by an attacker.
  • Users risked sending requests to the wrong recipient, although tests found no direct transfer of the trusted assistant's access details or tools.

Appeared in

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