Whispers of Wealth: Red-Teaming Google's Agent Payments Protocol via Prompt Injection

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Authors: Tanusree Debi, Wentian Zhu, Pranjol Sen Gupta
Cited by: 0

Abstract

Large language model (LLM) based agents are increasingly used to automate financial transactions, yet their reliance on contextual reasoning exposes payment systems to prompt-driven manipulation. The Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) aims to secure agent-led purchases through cryptographically verifiable mandates, but its practical robustness remains underexplored. In this work, we perform an AI red-teaming evaluation of AP2 and identify vulnerabilities arising from indirect and direct prompt injection. We introduce two attack techniques, the Branded Whisper Attack and the Vault Whisper Attack which manipulate product ranking and extract sensitive user data. Using a functional AP2 based shopping agent built with Gemini-2.5-Flash and the Google ADK framework, we experimentally validate that simple adversarial prompts can reliably subvert agent behavior. Our findings reveal critical weaknesses in current agentic payment architectures and highlight the need for stronger isolation and defensive safeguards in LLM-mediated financial systems.

Fields of Study & Subjects

Adversarial Robustness in Machine Learning Security and Verification in Computing Privacy-Preserving Technologies in Data

Publication details

Journal / source
arXiv (Cornell University)
Publication date
30 January 2026
Document type
Preprint