Attackers can turn AI agent guardrails into denial-of-service weapons

Attackers can turn AI agent guardrails into denial-of-service weapons, according to new research that found a single poisoned document can dramatically slow shared AI agent workflows by trapping reasoning-based safety systems in extended thinking loops. “Reasoning-based guardrails introduce a new attack surface where security mechanisms themselves become the target,” the researchers from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and collaborators wrote in the paper .