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AI agents vulnerable to social engineering attacks, new benchmark reveals

By PulseAugur Editorial · [1 sources] ·

Researchers have developed a new benchmark, Multimodal-SEA, designed to test the susceptibility of AI agents to social engineering attacks. The benchmark, which uses real-world fraud cases, found that all tested frontier AI models, including those from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and others, were vulnerable to these attacks. Even with multimodal evidence like forged screenshots, the agents often failed to detect deception and sometimes even reinforced it by verifying false information. AI

IMPACT Highlights critical vulnerabilities in current AI agents, suggesting a need for more robust safety and verification mechanisms beyond simple prompt-based defenses.

RANK_REASON Research paper detailing a new benchmark and its findings on AI agent vulnerabilities. [lever_c_demoted from research: ic=1 ai=1.0]

Read on dev.to — LLM tag →

AI-generated summary · Google Gemini · from 1 sources. How we write summaries →

AI agents vulnerable to social engineering attacks, new benchmark reveals

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26 / 100
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Research paper detailing a new benchmark and its findings on AI agent vulnerabilities. [lever_c_demoted from research: ic=1 ai=1.0]
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safety, model release
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High
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Breaking (< 6h)
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COVERAGE [1]

  1. dev.to — LLM tag TIER_1 English(EN) · Ganesh Sivakumar ·

    A new benchmark conned every frontier AI agent it tested.

    <p>A research team at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology built Multimodal-SEA, a benchmark (published as an arXiv preprint) that lets attackers socially engineer personal AI agents the way criminals con people: impersonating a spouse or colleague, building trust, …

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