OWASP ASI07: Insecure Inter-Agent Communication

Multi-agent systems depend on continuous communication across APIs, message buses, and shared memory. Decentralized architecture and uneven trust make perimeter-based security ineffective. ASI07 covers transport-, routing-, discovery-, and semantic-layer attacks, including covert channels exploiting timing or behavioral cues.

Common ASI07 patterns include:

• Semantic injection via unencrypted channels: MITM attackers inject hidden instructions into in-flight messages.
• Replay on trust chains: Stale delegation or coordination messages re-grant access an originator no longer holds.
• Protocol downgrade and descriptor forgery: Forced legacy modes let attackers inject objectives or risk parameters.
• Routing attacks on discovery: Misdirected discovery traffic establishes trust with malicious peers.
• Agent-in-the-middle via descriptor poisoning: A spoofed MCP endpoint routes sensitive traffic through attacker infrastructure.

Attacks like A2A registration spoofing and MCP descriptor poisoning are reproducible at low cost across vendor ecosystems. Effective defense requires mutual authentication, message integrity with signing, anti-replay with nonces, protocol pinning, and attested registries with signed agent cards.

How PointGuard AI Helps

PointGuard's Agent Governance Mesh implements the Inter-Agent Trust Protocol (ITAP) for authenticated, encrypted A2A communication, while the MCP Security Gateway enforces mutual auth, protocol version pinning, and signed agent cards before any cross-agent message is honored.

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OWASP Top 10 for Agentic Applications

W3C Decentralized Identifiers (DIDs) 1.0

NIST SP 800-207 Zero Trust Architecture