When Child Inherits: Modeling and Exploiting Subagent Spawn in Multi-Agent Networks

Ziwen Cai, Yihe Zhang, Xiali Hei

Abstract

Since the official release of ChatGPT in 2022, large language models (LLMs) have rapidly evolved from chatbot-style interfaces into agentic systems that can delegate work through tools and newly spawned subagents. While these capabilities improve automation and scalability, they also pose new security risks in multi-agent networks. Existing research has studied how individual LLM-based agents can be compromised through prompt injection, jailbreaking, poisoned retrieval data, or malicious extensi

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Cite This Resource

@article{llmsec202600111,
  title = {When Child Inherits: Modeling and Exploiting Subagent Spawn in Multi-Agent Networks},
  author = {Ziwen Cai and Yihe Zhang and Xiali Hei},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.08460},
}