aiqbench analysis
MAS-Shield addresses the critical security-efficiency trade-off in LLM-based Multi-Agent Systems by introducing a hierarchical defense framework that dynamically allocates resources. By combining lightweight sentry models with heavyweight committee arbitration only for high-risk cases, it significantly reduces latency while maintaining robust protection against cascading linguistic attacks. This approach offers a practical solution for deploying secure agent networks without incurring prohibitive computational costs.
MAS-Shield: A Defense Framework for Secure and Efficient LLM MAS
arXiv:2511.22924v3 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Large Language Model (LLM)-based Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) are susceptible to linguistic attacks that can trigger cascading failures across the network. Existing defenses face a fundamental dilemma: lightweight single-auditor methods are prone to single points of failure, while robust committee-based approaches incur prohibitive computational costs in multi-turn interactions. To address this challenge, we propose \textbf{MAS-Shield}, a secure and efficient defense framework designed with a coarse-to-fine filtering pipeline. Rather than applying uniform scrutiny, MAS-Shield dynamically allocates defense resources through a three-stage protocol: (1) \textbf{Critical Agent Selection } strategically targets high-influence nodes to narrow the defense surface; (2) \textbf{Light Auditing} employs lightweight sentry models to rapidly filter the majority of benign cases; and (3) \textbf{Global Consensus Auditing} escalates only suspicious or ambiguous signals to a heavyweight committee for definitive arbitration. This hierarchical design effectively optimizes the security-efficiency trade-off. Experiments demonstrate that MAS-Shield achieves a 92.5\% recovery rate against diverse adversarial scenarios and reduces defense latency by over 70\% compared to existing methods.
Abstract:Large Language Model (LLM)-based Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) are susceptible to linguistic attacks that can trigger cascading failures across the network. Existing defenses face a fundamental dilemma: lightweight single-auditor methods are prone to single points of failure, while robust committee-based approaches incur prohibitive computational costs in multi-turn interactions. To address this challenge, we propose \textbf{MAS-Shield}, a secure and efficient defense framework designed with a coarse-to-fine filtering pipeline. Rather than applying uniform scrutiny, MAS-Shield dynamically allocates defense resources through a three-stage protocol: (1) \textbf{Critical Agent Selection } strategically targets high-influence nodes to narrow the defense surface; (2) \textbf{Light Auditing} employs lightweight sentry models to rapidly filter the majority of benign cases; and (3) \textbf{Global Consensus Auditing} escalates only suspicious or ambiguous signals to a heavyweight committee for definitive arbitration. This hierarchical design effectively optimizes the security-efficiency trade-off. Experiments demonstrate that MAS-Shield achieves a 92.5\% recovery rate against diverse adversarial scenarios and reduces defense latency by over 70\% compared to existing methods.
Multiagent Systems (cs.MA); Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI); Cryptography and Security (cs.CR)
arXiv:2511.22924 [cs.MA]
(or arXiv:2511.22924v3 [cs.MA] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2511.22924 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite
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Full text under the publisher's open licence · 258 words