paperSeptember 2026Unreviewed

Agent Memory Is a Surface for Endogenous Authorization Laundering

Tommaso Cerruti, Mika Okamoto, Ansel Kaplan Erol

Abstract

Long-running LLM agents rely on persistent memory to carry state across interactions, including permissions, restrictions, and revocations. When memory misrepresents this evolving authorization state, the agent's own records can grant authority that the underlying history never permitted, resulting in misaligned behavior without any external attacks. We term this failure endogenous authorization laundering, where spurious permissions written into memory lead to unauthorized actions as their prov

Cite

@misc{cerruti2026agent,
  title = {{Agent Memory Is a Surface for Endogenous Authorization Laundering}},
  author = {Tommaso Cerruti and Mika Okamoto and Ansel Kaplan Erol},
  year = {2026},
  month = sep,
  eprint = {2609.01836},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.01836}
}