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WebWeaver: Breaking Topology Confidentiality in LLM Multi-Agent Systems with Stealthy Context-Based Inference

Zixun Xiong Gaoyi Wu Lingfeng Yao Miao Pan Xiaojiang Du Hao Wang
Published
March 11, 2026
Updated
March 19, 2026

Abstract

Communication topology is a critical factor in the utility and safety of LLM-based multi-agent systems (LLM-MAS), making it a high-value intellectual property (IP) whose confidentiality remains insufficiently studied. Existing topology inference attempts rely on impractical assumptions, including control over the administrative agent and direct identity queries via jailbreaks, which are easily defeated by basic keyword-based defenses. As a result, prior analyses fail to capture the real-world threat of such attacks. To bridge this realism gap, we propose \textit{WebWeaver}, an attack framework that infers the complete LLM-MAS topology by compromising only a single arbitrary agent instead of the administrative agent. Unlike prior approaches, WebWeaver relies solely on agent contexts rather than agent IDs, enabling significantly stealthier inference. WebWeaver further introduces a new covert jailbreak-based mechanism and a novel fully jailbreak-free diffusion design to handle cases where jailbreaks fail. Additionally, we address a key challenge in diffusion-based inference by proposing a masking strategy that preserves known topology during diffusion, with theoretical guarantees of correctness. Extensive experiments show that WebWeaver substantially outperforms state-of-the-art (SOTA) baselines, achieving about 60\% higher inference accuracy under active defenses with negligible overhead.

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