A Trembling House of Cards? Mapping Adversarial Attacks against Language
  Agents
Lingbo Mo Zeyi Liao Boyuan Zheng Yu Su Chaowei Xiao Huan Sun
Language agents powered by large language models (LLMs) have seen exploding
development. Their capability of using language as a vehicle for thought and
communication lends an incredible level of flexibility and versatility. People
have quickly capitalized on this capability to connect LLMs to a wide range of
external components and environments: databases, tools, the Internet, robotic
embodiment, etc. Many believe an unprecedentedly powerful automation technology
is emerging. However, new automation technologies come with new safety risks,
especially for intricate systems like language agents. There is a surprisingly
large gap between the speed and scale of their development and deployment and
our understanding of their safety risks. Are we building a house of cards? In
this position paper, we present the first systematic effort in mapping
adversarial attacks against language agents. We first present a unified
conceptual framework for agents with three major components: Perception, Brain,
and Action. Under this framework, we present a comprehensive discussion and
propose 12 potential attack scenarios against different components of an agent,
covering different attack strategies (e.g., input manipulation, adversarial
demonstrations, jailbreaking, backdoors). We also draw connections to
successful attack strategies previously applied to LLMs. We emphasize the
urgency to gain a thorough understanding of language agent risks before their
widespread deployment.