揭露网页自动化代理的新攻击方式并提供实时防御方案。
When Bots Take the Bait: Exposing and Mitigating the Emerging Social Engineering Attack in Web Automation Agent
- 提出AgentBait攻击,利用上下文诱导代理偏离原目标。
- 实测主流框架攻击成功率高达67.5%,最高超80%。
- 设计SUPERVISOR防御模块,降低攻击成功率78.1%且开销仅7.7%。
基于大语言模型的网页自动化代理正被广泛应用,开源框架(如Browser Use、Skyvern-AI)的普及加速了部署,但也扩大了攻击面。现有研究多关注提示注入与后门等模型威胁,而社交工程风险尚未被充分探索。本文首次系统研究针对网页自动化代理的社交工程攻击,提出AgentBait范式,利用代理执行中的内在弱点——诱导性上下文可扭曲其推理,使其偏离原始任务目标。在防御方面,设计轻量级运行时模块SUPERVISOR,通过强制网页上下文与预期目标的一致性来阻止危险操作。实验表明,主流框架对AgentBait高度脆弱,平均攻击成功率67.5%,特定策略下超过80%。相较于现有轻量级防御,SUPERVISOR可无缝集成于多种框架,平均将攻击成功率降低78.1%,仅带来7.7%运行时开销,同时保持可用性。该工作揭示了代理新威胁面,并建立实用、通用的防御机制,推动这一新兴生态的安全发展。相关漏洞已报告给框架开发者并获确认。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Web agents, powered by large language models (LLMs), are increasingly deployed to automate complex web interactions. The rise of open-source frameworks (e.g., Browser Use, Skyvern-AI) has accelerated adoption, but also broadened the attack surface. While prior research has focused on model threats such as prompt injection and backdoors, the risks of social engineering remain largely unexplored. We present the first systematic study of social engineering attacks against web automation agents and design a pluggable runtime mitigation solution. On the attack side, we introduce the AgentBait paradigm, which exploits intrinsic weaknesses in agent execution: inducement contexts can distort the agent's reasoning and steer it toward malicious objectives misaligned with the intended task. On the defense side, we propose SUPERVISOR, a lightweight runtime module that enforces environment and intention consistency alignment between webpage context and intended goals to mitigate unsafe operations before execution. Empirical results show that mainstream frameworks are highly vulnerable to AgentBait, with an average attack success rate of 67.5% and peaks above 80% under specific strategies (e.g., trusted identity forgery). Compared with existing lightweight defenses, our module can be seamlessly integrated across different web automation frameworks and reduces attack success rates by up to 78.1% on average while incurring only a 7.7% runtime overhead and preserving usability. This work reveals AgentBait as a critical new threat surface for web agents and establishes a practical, generalizable defense, advancing the security of this rapidly emerging ecosystem. We reported the details of this attack to the framework developers and received acknowledgment before submission.
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