Search arXiv⌕ Search

arXiv · 2509.18415

Context Lineage Assurance for Non-Human Identities in Critical Multi-Agent Systems

Abstract

The proliferation of autonomous software agents necessitates rigorous frameworks for establishing secure and verifiable agent-to-agent (A2A) interactions, particularly when such agents are instantiated as non-human identities(NHIs). We extend the A2A paradigm [1 , 2] by introducing a cryptographically grounded mechanism for lineage verification, wherein the provenance and evolution of NHIs are anchored in append-only Merkle tree structures modeled after Certificate Transparency (CT) logs. Unlike traditional A2A models that primarily secure point-to-point interactions, our approach enables both agents and external verifiers to cryptographically validate multi-hop provenance, thereby ensuring the integrity of the entire call chain. A federated proof server acts as an auditor across one or more Merkle logs, aggregating inclusion proofs and consistency checks into compact, signed attestations that external parties can verify without access to the full execution trace. In parallel, we augment the A2A agent card to incorporate explicit identity verification primitives, enabling both peer agents and human approvers to authenticate the legitimacy of NHI representations in a standardized manner. Together, these contributions establish a cohesive model that integrates identity attestation, lineage verification, and independent proof auditing, thereby advancing the security posture of inter-agent ecosystems and providing a foundation for robust governance of NHIs in regulated environments such as FedRAMP.

Explore related subjects

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Sumana Malkapuram, Sameera Gangavarapu, Kailashnath Reddy Kavalakuntla, Ananya Gangavarapu. 2025-09-22. Context Lineage Assurance for Non-Human Identities in Critical Multi-Agent Systems. https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.18415

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related papers

The shifted-prime Erdős-Wintner law for primitive-root determinant densities: extremal order, dimension zero, and Fourier decay

For a prime $p$, let $c(p)=\frac{φ(p-1)}{p-1}\prod_{j\ge1}(1-p^{-j})$, the limiting density of matrices over $\mathbb F_p$ with primitive-root determinant. Its limiting law over the primes is the classical continuous shifted-totient law on $[0,1/2]$. We prove Hausdorff dimension zero and vanishing lower and upper dyadic $L^q$ dimensions for $q>1$. Its image $μ_f$ under $x\mapsto-\log x$ is Rajchman. As $T\to\infty$, for $U_T$ uniform on $[0,T]$, $\log|\widehat{μ_f}(U_T)|/\log\log T\to-1$ in probability. For every $A>0$, $|\widehat{μ_f}(τ)|\le(\log\log T)^4/\log T$ outside a subset of $[0,T]$ of relative measure $O_A((\log T)^{-A})$. As $h\downarrow0$, $\sup_aμ_f([a,a+h])=\mathfrak S_2e^{-γ}/\log(1/h)+O(\log^{-2}(1/h))$, where $\mathfrak S_2$ is the twin-prime singular series; maximizing left endpoints lie within $h$ of $\log3$ for small $h$. We prove $\min_{p\le x}c(p)\sim e^{-γ}/\log\log x$ and $\limsup_{p\to\infty}(c(p)\log\log p)^{-1}=e^γ$. The limiting law of $\log(φ(p+1)/φ(p-1))$ has support $\mathbb R$ and Hausdorff dimension zero. For the classical law of $σ(p-1)/(p-1)$ on $[3/2,\infty)$, we prove dimension zero, a sharp left-endpoint asymptotic, and a Rajchman logarithmic image. Its odd-prime component has an entire Mellin transform of order one. Partial-factorization bounds yield certified asymptotic searches for fully splitting negacyclic number-theoretic transform primes with prescribed reciprocal-density bounds at fixed power-of-two length. We determine the second distinct squared norm of $A_{n_1}\otimes\cdots\otimes A_{n_k}$ for $k,n_i\ge2$, yielding exact cyclotomic codifferent shell gaps and a uniform smoothing asymptotic at $ε=2^{-cφ(m)}$ for $c>2\log_2(1+\sqrt6)$. These results are unconditional. An explicit unproved exponent-pair hypothesis yields $|\widehat{μ_f}(τ)|=O(1/\log\log|τ|)$.

cs.CR↗

Studying Detection Rule Generation as a Unified Task

Security systems use detection rules to identify suspicious activity. Existing studies often investigate rule generation for specific security systems, devoting substantial effort to developing dedicated methods and evaluation setups. Such customization contributes to fragmented research, limiting method reuse and result comparability across systems. We therefore study detection rule generation as a unified task across diverse natural language inputs and rule languages. To support method reuse, we propose UniRule, which abstracts diverse rules into shared natural language representations for retrieval. To enable consistent evaluation, we introduce a protocol that compares rules under shared criteria and aggregates the results into method scores. Experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of UniRule and the reliability of the evaluation protocol. They also show that method performance in one setting can be predicted from results in others, with average error close to that obtained using that setting's own data. These findings support studying detection rule generation as a unified task.

cs.CR↗

Analyzing Defensive Misdirection Against Model-Guided Automated Attacks on Agentic AI Systems

Agentic AI systems increasingly rely on language-model components to interpret instructions, process external data, invoke tools, and coordinate with other agents. These capabilities make prompt-injection and jailbreak attacks more consequential, especially as attackers adopt model-guided automation to scale probing, prompt refinement, and response evaluation. This work analyzes the resulting attack-defense setting through a probabilistic model of a target system, its defense mechanism, and the attacker's automated judge. Our analysis shows that conventional detect-and-block defenses can allow attacker success rate (ASR) to approach one as the query budget grows, since predictable refusals provide useful feedback to automated search. We then examine detect-and-misdirect, where detected malicious interactions receive controlled, non-operational responses designed to induce false-positive errors in the attacker's judge. This strategy reduces the positive predictive value of attacker-selected candidates and yields a bounded asymptotic ASR. We evaluate a proof-of-concept realization of this strategy through Contextual Misdirection via Progressive Engagement (CMPE), a lightweight conversational misdirection method designed to replace predictable refusal text with safe but strategically misleading responses in automated jailbreak settings. On jailbreak benchmarks, CMPE reduces estimated ASR upper bounds by up to two orders of magnitude and nearly eliminates verified attack success in end-to-end experiments with PAIR, GPTFuzz, and AutoDAN-Turbo.

cs.CR↗