Hardware Keystores for AI Agent Signing Workflows: A Zero-Trust MCP Enforcement Architecture
AI agents increasingly sign Git commits, certify documents, and attest release artifacts on behalf of their operators, using private keys that live in software-accessible locations (plaintext files, environment variables, container memory) readable by any process the agent can reach. A widely deployed agent framework recently leaked its keys this way to a single email injection. Hardware keystores (HSM, TPM, smart card) keep the key on-device, but exposing the keystore as a tool an LLM agent can call moves the problem rather than removing it: once a signing session exists, the hardware cannot tell a request reflecting the operator's intent from one injected into content the agent read. We...
| Authors | Leo Sambrook, Sampo Sovio |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.CR |
| Published | 6 August 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 23 September 2026 |
Silytics shows public metadata from arXiv and links to the original. Information may be incomplete or out of date. Last refreshed 17 October 2026. Licenses and terms of the original apply to the work itself. Not financial, legal or professional advice.