aiqbench analysis
This research introduces MIRAGE, a novel framework designed to protect the proprietary architecture of LLM-based multi-agent systems by masking their true communication topology. By generating a deceptive "phantom" structure that misleads inference attacks while maintaining task performance, the study directly addresses critical intellectual property leakage risks in black-box AI environments. The work bridges AI safety and cryptographic security, offering a practical defense against adversaries attempting to reverse-engineer system designs from observable reasoning traces.
Concealing LLM-Based Multi-Agent Topology via Phantom Structure Injection
arXiv:2609.37567v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Driven by the rapid advancement of large language models (LLMs), LLM-based multi-agent systems (MAS) have emerged as a powerful paradigm for collaborative reasoning over complex tasks. A key design element of MAS is the communication topology, which governs information flow among agents and often encodes proprietary knowledge about the system architecture. However, recent work has shown that such topologies can be inferred even in black-box settings by exploiting semantic dependencies in observable reasoning traces, posing significant risks of intellectual property leakage and exposure of system vulnerabilities. To address this threat, we propose MIRAGE, a topology-concealment framework that preserves the genuine communication topology for task execution while shaping adversary-facing semantic evidence toward a carefully constructed phantom topology. Specifically, MIRAGE operates in three stages: (1) phantom topology synthesis, (2) semantic edge realization, and (3) protected MAS execution. It constructs a phantom topology structurally distinct from the genuine one, materializes phantom edges as plausible semantic dependencies, and suppresses source-specific cues that could reveal genuine edges absent from the phantom topology. Extensive experiments across three topology optimization frameworks and four benchmark datasets demonstrate that MIRAGE substantially reduces the effectiveness of topology inference attacks while largely preserving the task utility of the protected MAS.
Abstract:Driven by the rapid advancement of large language models (LLMs), LLM-based multi-agent systems (MAS) have emerged as a powerful paradigm for collaborative reasoning over complex tasks. A key design element of MAS is the communication topology, which governs information flow among agents and often encodes proprietary knowledge about the system architecture. However, recent work has shown that such topologies can be inferred even in black-box settings by exploiting semantic dependencies in observable reasoning traces, posing significant risks of intellectual property leakage and exposure of system vulnerabilities. To address this threat, we propose MIRAGE, a topology-concealment framework that preserves the genuine communication topology for task execution while shaping adversary-facing semantic evidence toward a carefully constructed phantom topology. Specifically, MIRAGE operates in three stages: (1) phantom topology synthesis, (2) semantic edge realization, and (3) protected MAS execution. It constructs a phantom topology structurally distinct from the genuine one, materializes phantom edges as plausible semantic dependencies, and suppresses source-specific cues that could reveal genuine edges absent from the phantom topology. Extensive experiments across three topology optimization frameworks and four benchmark datasets demonstrate that MIRAGE substantially reduces the effectiveness of topology inference attacks while largely preserving the task utility of the protected MAS.
Cryptography and Security (cs.CR); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI)
arXiv:2609.37567 [cs.CR]
(or arXiv:2609.37567v1 [cs.CR] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.37567 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)
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Full text under the publisher's open licence · 297 words
