Insecure Inter-Agent Protocol Abuse

Attackers exploit weaknesses in the coordination protocols agents speak — chiefly MCP and A2A — to bypass consent checks, hijack a protocol transition, or corrupt shared context, turning the connective tissue of a… In a multi-agent system: A malformed MCP message mimics a legitimate protocol transition and skips the consent step a tool call should have required, so a specialist agent executes a sensitive operation the orchestrator never approved.

Maturity

Established

Cognitive loadMedium

360° overview

Insecure Inter-Agent Protocol Abuse

Six perspectives place the building block in context. The numbers show where each perspective continues in the reading path.

The building block at a glance

Insecure Inter-Agent Protocol Abuse

360°

Classification

Complexity: Medium
Impact area: Technical

Technical context

Integrations

Authenticate and encrypt the protocol, not just the payload.

Principles & goals

Value stream stage: Run

Use cases & scenarios

Use cases: 3
Scenarios: 3

Compromises

Risks: 3
Best practices: 3

I/O & resources

Inputs: 3
Outputs: 3