When Convenience Becomes Risk: A Semantic View of Under-Specification in Host-Acting Agents
Host-acting agents promise a convenient interaction model in which users specify goals and the system determines how to realize them. We argue that this convenience introduces a distinct security problem: semantic under-specification in goal specification. User instructions are typically goal-oriented, yet they often leave process constraints, safety boundaries, persistence, and exposure insufficiently specified. As a result, the agent must complete missing execution semantics before acting, and this completion can produce risky host-side plans even when the user-stated goal is benign. In this paper, we develop a semantic threat model, present a taxonomy of semantic-induced risky completi...
| Authors | Di Lu, Yongzhi Liao, Xutong Mu et al. |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.CR |
| Published | 22 March 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 22 March 2026 |
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