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WebWeaver: Breaking Topology Confidentiality in LLM Multi-Agent Systems with Stealthy Context-Based Inference

arXiv cs.AI / 3/13/2026

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Key Points

  • WebWeaver is a framework that can infer the complete LLM-MAS topology by compromising only a single arbitrary agent, removing the need to control the administrative agent.
  • It relies on agent contexts rather than IDs, enabling significantly stealthier topology inference under real-world defenses.
  • The approach introduces a covert jailbreak-based mechanism and a fully jailbreak-free diffusion design, along with a masking strategy that preserves known topology during diffusion with theoretical guarantees.
  • Experiments show WebWeaver substantially outperforms state-of-the-art baselines, achieving about 60% higher inference accuracy under active defenses with negligible overhead.

Abstract

Communication topology is a critical factor in the utility and safety of LLM-based multi-agent systems (LLM-MAS), making it a high-value intellectual property (IP) whose confidentiality remains insufficiently studied. % Existing topology inference attempts rely on impractical assumptions, including control over the administrative agent and direct identity queries via jailbreaks, which are easily defeated by basic keyword-based defenses. As a result, prior analyses fail to capture the real-world threat of such attacks. % To bridge this realism gap, we propose \textit{WebWeaver}, an attack framework that infers the complete LLM-MAS topology by compromising only a single arbitrary agent instead of the administrative agent. % Unlike prior approaches, WebWeaver relies solely on agent contexts rather than agent IDs, enabling significantly stealthier inference. % WebWeaver further introduces a new covert jailbreak-based mechanism and a novel fully jailbreak-free diffusion design to handle cases where jailbreaks fail. % Additionally, we address a key challenge in diffusion-based inference by proposing a masking strategy that preserves known topology during diffusion, with theoretical guarantees of correctness. % Extensive experiments show that WebWeaver substantially outperforms state-of-the-art (SOTA) baselines, achieving about 60\% higher inference accuracy under active defenses with negligible overhead.