❌

Normal view

MCP Security Bench (MSB): Benchmarking Attacks Against Model Context Protocol in LLM Agents

arXiv:2510.15994v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: The Model Context Protocol (MCP) standardizes how large language model (LLM) agents discover, describe, and call external tools. While MCP unlocks broad interoperability, it also enlarges the attack surface by making tools first-class, composable objects with natural-language metadata, and standardized I/O. We present MSB (MCP Security Benchmark), the first end-to-end evaluation suite that systematically measures how well LLM agents resist MCP-specific attacks throughout the full tool-use pipeline: task planning, tool invocation, and response handling. MSB contributes: (1) a taxonomy of 12 attacks including name-collision, preference manipulation, prompt injections embedded in tool descriptions, out-of-scope parameter requests, user-impersonating responses, false-error escalation, tool-transfer, retrieval injection, and mixed attacks; (2) an evaluation harness that executes attacks by running real tools (both benign and malicious) via MCP rather than simulation; and (3) a robustness metric that quantifies the trade-off between security and performance: Net Resilient Performance (NRP). We evaluate nine popular LLM agents across 10 domains and 405 tools, producing 2,000 attack instances. Results reveal the effectiveness of attacks against each stage of MCP. Models with stronger performance are more vulnerable to attacks due to their outstanding tool calling and instruction following capabilities. MSB provides a practical baseline for researchers and practitioners to study, compare, and harden MCP agents. Code: https://github.com/dongsenzhang/MSB

TrasMuon: Trust-Region Adaptive Scaling for Orthogonalized Momentum Optimizers

arXiv:2602.13498v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Muon-style optimizers leverage Newton-Schulz (NS) iterations to orthogonalize updates, yielding update geometries that often outperform Adam-series methods. However, this orthogonalization discards magnitude information, rendering training sensitive to step-size hyperparameters and vulnerable to high-energy bursts. To mitigate this, we introduce TrasMuon (\textbf{T}rust \textbf{R}egion \textbf{A}daptive \textbf{S}caling \textbf{Muon}). TrasMuon preserves the near-isometric geometry of Muon while stabilizing magnitudes through (i) global RMS calibration and (ii) energy-based trust-region clipping. We demonstrate that while reintroducing adaptive scaling improves optimization efficiency, it typically exacerbates instability due to high-energy outliers. TrasMuon addresses this by defining a trust region based on relative energy ratios, confining updates to a stable zone. Empirical experiments on vision and language models demonstrate that TrasMuon converges faster than baselines. Furthermore, experiments without warmup stages confirm TrasMuon's superior stability and robustness.

Anatomy of Agentic Memory: Taxonomy and Empirical Analysis of Evaluation and System Limitations

arXiv:2602.19320v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Agentic memory systems enable large language model (LLM) agents to maintain state across long interactions, supporting long-horizon reasoning and personalization beyond fixed context windows. Despite rapid architectural development, the empirical foundations of these systems remain fragile: existing benchmarks are often underscaled, evaluation metrics are misaligned with semantic utility, performance varies significantly across backbone models, and system-level costs are frequently overlooked. This survey presents a structured analysis of agentic memory from both architectural and system perspectives. We first introduce a concise taxonomy of MAG systems based on four memory structures. Then, we analyze key pain points limiting current systems, including benchmark saturation effects, metric validity and judge sensitivity, backbone-dependent accuracy, and the latency and throughput overhead introduced by memory maintenance. By connecting the memory structure to empirical limitations, this survey clarifies why current agentic memory systems often underperform their theoretical promise and outlines directions for more reliable evaluation and scalable system design.

Buy versus Build an LLM: A Decision Framework for Governments

arXiv:2602.13033v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Large Language Models (LLMs) represent a new frontier of digital infrastructure that can support a wide range of public-sector applications, from general purpose citizen services to specialized and sensitive state functions. When expanding AI access, governments face a set of strategic choices over whether to buy existing services, build domestic capabilities, or adopt hybrid approaches across different domains and use cases. These are critical decisions especially when leading model providers are often foreign corporations, and LLM outputs are increasingly treated as trusted inputs to public decision-making and public discourse. In practice, these decisions are not intended to mandate a single approach across all domains; instead, national AI strategies are typically pluralistic, with sovereign, commercial and open-source models coexisting to serve different purposes. Governments may rely on commercial models for non-sensitive or commodity tasks, while pursuing greater control for critical, high-risk or strategically important applications. This paper provides a strategic framework for making this decision by evaluating these options across dimensions including sovereignty, safety, cost, resource capability, cultural fit, and sustainability. Importantly, "building" does not imply that governments must act alone: domestic capabilities may be developed through public research institutions, universities, state-owned enterprises, joint ventures, or broader national ecosystems. By detailing the technical requirements and practical challenges of each pathway, this work aims to serve as a reference for policy-makers to determine whether a buy or build approach best aligns with their specific national needs and societal goals.

TrasMuon: Trust-Region Adaptive Scaling for Orthogonalized Momentum Optimizers

arXiv:2602.13498v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Muon-style optimizers leverage Newton-Schulz (NS) iterations to orthogonalize updates, yielding update geometries that often outperform Adam-series methods. However, this orthogonalization discards magnitude information, rendering training sensitive to step-size hyperparameters and vulnerable to high-energy bursts. To mitigate this, we introduce TrasMuon (\textbf{T}rust \textbf{R}egion \textbf{A}daptive \textbf{S}caling \textbf{Muon}). TrasMuon preserves the near-isometric geometry of Muon while stabilizing magnitudes through (i) global RMS calibration and (ii) energy-based trust-region clipping. We demonstrate that while reintroducing adaptive scaling improves optimization efficiency, it typically exacerbates instability due to high-energy outliers. TrasMuon addresses this by defining a trust region based on relative energy ratios, confining updates to a stable zone. Empirical experiments on vision and language models demonstrate that TrasMuon converges faster than baselines. Furthermore, experiments without warmup stages confirm TrasMuon's superior stability and robustness.
❌