MIT AI Risk Repository · Risk Sub-Category · 63.10.05
Cascading Security Failures
Category: Multi-Agent Security
Description
"Cascading Security Failures. Localised attacks in multi-agent systems can result in catastrophic macroscopic outcomes (Motter & Lai, 2002, see also Sections 3.2 and 3.4). These cascades can be hard to mitigate or recover from because component failure may be difficult to detect or localise in multi-agent systems (Lamport et al., 1982), and authentication challenges can facilitate false flag attacks (Skopik & Pahi, 2020). Computer worms represent a classic example of a cybersecurity threat that relies inherently on networked systems. Recent work has provided preliminary evidence that similar a
From Multi-Agent Risks from Advanced AI (Hammond2025), as extracted by the MIT AI Risk Repository (CC BY 4.0).
Classification
- Subdomain
- 7.6 Multi-agent risks
- Causal entity
- Other
- Intent
- Intentional
- Timing
- Post-deployment
Subdomain definition: Risks from multi-agent interactions, due to incentives (which can lead to conflict or collusion) and/or the structure of multi-agent systems, which can create cascading failures, selection pressures, new security vulnerabilities, and a lack of shared information and trust.
How other frameworks describe this risk
- Groups of LLM-Agents May Show Emergent Functionality
- Collusion between LLM-Agents
- Multi-Agent Safety Is Not Assured by Single-Agent Safety
- Foundationality May Cause Correlated Failures
- Financial instability due to model homogeneity
- Impact on Financial Stability
- Multi-agent collaboration capability
- Multi-agent collusion propensity: