[2605.24245] Deep-Research Agents Can Be Poisoned via User-Generated Content

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Computer Science > Cryptography and Security

arXiv:2605.24245 (cs)

[Submitted on 22 May 2026]

Title:Deep-Research Agents Can Be Poisoned via User-Generated Content

Authors:Tingwei Zhang, Harold Triedman, Vitaly Shmatikov<br>View a PDF of the paper titled Deep-Research Agents Can Be Poisoned via User-Generated Content, by Tingwei Zhang and 2 other authors

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Abstract:Deep-research agents, i.e., systems that rely on multi-agent pipelines to iteratively retrieve, synthesize, and cite Web content in order to produce structured reports, are rapidly replacing traditional search for both routine and complex information needs. These agents issue many related queries during a single research session. We show that for many common search topics, they repeatedly retrieve the same user-generated content (UGC) pages from platforms such as Reddit and Wikipedia. Next, we argue that this retrieval overlap creates a concentrated attack surface: an adversary who appends a short, crafted text to a single, frequently retrieved UGC page can cause the agent to cite attacker-chosen content and promote attacker-chosen entities across many related queries.

We evaluate this attack on three representative deep-research systems (STORM, Co-STORM, and OmniThink) across multiple query clusters. We also study defenses at different stages of the pipeline, including source-level filtering and output-based detection. Our findings highlight a fundamental vulnerability in how deep-research agents retrieve and integrate web content.

Subjects:

Cryptography and Security (cs.CR)

Cite as:<br>arXiv:2605.24245 [cs.CR]

(or<br>arXiv:2605.24245v1 [cs.CR] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2605.24245

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arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

Submission history<br>From: Tingwei Zhang [view email]<br>[v1]<br>Fri, 22 May 2026 21:46:32 UTC (1,527 KB)

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