I published a new security preprint: VectorSmuggle: Steganographic Exfiltration in Embedding Stores and a Cryptographic Provenance Defense The paper looks at an integrity gap in RAG infrastructure: embeddings are usually treated as opaque numerical artifacts, but vector stores generally lack native/default controls for embedding integrity or provenance. The finding is nuanced: simple anomaly detectors catch many crude perturbations, but small-angle orthogonal rotation exposes a harder class of embedding tampering. Statistical detection helps, but it should not be the load-bearing control. I propose VectorPin: a minimal cryptographic provenance protocol that signs a canonical commitment over the source, model, and vector bytes. If the vector is modified after pinning, verification fails. Paper: doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20058… vectorpin.org

AI agents are getting more powerful. The trust layer around them is not. Today, too much agent safety still depends on prompts, wrappers, and best-effort guardrails. That is not enough for systems that can actually take action. Introducing OATS: the Open Agent Trust Stack. OATS is an open specification for zero-trust AI agent execution built around tool contracts, identity, policy, and auditability. It is also grounded in real implementation work. Symbiont has been applying these ideas in practice over the past year. The goal: make safe behavior enforceable by design, not optional at runtime. openagenttruststack.org #AI #AISecurity #AgenticAI #OpenSource