arXiv:2605.20704cs.CRcs.AI2026-05

让AI代理群的权限在断网后也能快速失效,防止失控操作。

Heartbeat-Bound Hierarchical Credentials: Cryptographic Revocation for AI Agent Swarms

  • 用心跳信号绑定凭证有效期,断网也能自动失效
  • 僵尸窗口缩小90倍,验证延迟仅0.26毫秒,每秒可处理1.8万次验证
  • 适合高安全需求的AI代理系统,尤其对抗恶意指令绕过

自主运行的AI代理生成子代理群时存在安全漏洞:现有凭证撤销机制(如OAuth 2.0、OCSP、W3C状态列表)需依赖中心服务器网络连接,导致操作员关闭后仍存在数分钟至数小时的‘僵尸代理’执行特权操作。本文提出心跳绑定层级凭证(HBHC),将凭证有效性与父代理的心跳证明绑定。验证方仅需缓存公钥和本地时钟即可强制保证时效性,无需网络通信。当心跳停止,所有子级凭证在确定性边界 $W_z \le W_{\max} + Δ_h + ε$ 内失效,前提为时钟偏移有界且父密钥存储于安全飞地。协议层及真实LLM驱动代理群(GPT-4o-mini)实验表明,相比OAuth 2.0,僵尸窗口减少90倍;Rust实现全认证耗时0.26毫秒,高并发HTTP负载下每秒验证超18,000次,10至10,000个代理时验证延迟稳定;真实代理测试显示工具调用端到端开销0.71%,在绕过应用层防护的提示注入攻击下零后续调用,49个代理的四层层级结构可在理论边界内完成级联撤销。

原文摘要 · Abstract (English)

Autonomous AI agents that spawn sub-agent swarms create a safety gap: existing credential revocation mechanisms, OAuth~2.0 introspection, OCSP, and W3C Status Lists, require network connectivity to a central authority, leaving ``zombie agents'' executing privileged operations for minutes to hours after operator shutdown. We present Heartbeat-Bound Hierarchical Credentials (HBHC), a cryptographic protocol that binds credential validity to periodic parent liveness proofs. Verifiers enforce freshness using only a cached public key and local clock; no network round-trip is required. When heartbeat generation ceases, all descendant credentials become unusable within a deterministically bounded window $W_z \le W_{\max} + Δ_h + ε$, conditional on bounded clock skew and parent keys held in secure enclaves. Evaluation at the protocol layer and with real LLM-backed agent swarms (GPT-4o-mini) demonstrates a 90$\times$ reduction in the zombie window over OAuth~2.0, 0.26~ms full authentication in Rust, 18,000+ verifications per second under concurrent HTTP load, and stable per-verification latency from 10 to 10,000 agents. Real-agent experiments show 0.71\% end-to-end overhead on tool calls, zero post-revocation tool calls under prompt injection that bypasses application-layer guardrails, and cascading revocation across a 49-agent four-level hierarchy within the theoretical bound.

AI安全凭证管理去中心化验证

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