Security Analysis of Agentic AI Communication Protocols: A Comparative Evaluation

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2511.03841v1
• Date: Wed, 05 Nov 2025 20:19:22 GMT
• Title: Security Analysis of Agentic AI Communication Protocols: A Comparative Evaluation
• Abstract summary: Multi-agent systems powered by artificial intelligence (AI) are increasingly foundational to complex, distributed systems.<n>Yet, the security of their underlying communication protocols remains critically under-examined.<n>This paper presents the first empirical, comparative security analysis of the official CORAL implementation and a high-fidelity, SDK-based ACP implementation.
• Score: 3.398964351541323
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: Multi-agent systems (MAS) powered by artificial intelligence (AI) are increasingly foundational to complex, distributed workflows. Yet, the security of their underlying communication protocols remains critically under-examined. This paper presents the first empirical, comparative security analysis of the official CORAL implementation and a high-fidelity, SDK-based ACP implementation, benchmarked against a literature-based evaluation of A2A. Using a 14 point vulnerability taxonomy, we systematically assess their defenses across authentication, authorization, integrity, confidentiality, and availability. Our results reveal a pronounced security dichotomy: CORAL exhibits a robust architectural design, particularly in its transport-layer message validation and session isolation, but suffers from critical implementation-level vulnerabilities, including authentication and authorization failures at its SSE gateway. Conversely, ACP's architectural flexibility, most notably its optional JWS enforcement, translates into high-impact integrity and confidentiality flaws. We contextualize these findings within current industry trends, highlighting that existing protocols remain insufficiently secure. As a path forward, we recommend a hybrid approach that combines CORAL's integrated architecture with ACP's mandatory per-message integrity guarantees, laying the groundwork for resilient, next-generation agent communications.

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