The latest hot topic within the AI community is agents. The vision for many developers is using agents to fill in the gap between what AI can do and users knowing how to prompt it to do what they want. Agents can potentially learn and guide users/programs as well as suggest things based on what is being observed. From an attacker point of view, this can be VERY interesting if one was to compromise an agent. If an agent has power to see and act, a threat actor could essentially take over through an agent.
With this concern in mind, the cloud security alliance released MAESTRO, which is a threat modeling framework. Here is the opening from this release
“This blog post presents MAESTRO (Multi-Agent Environment, Security, Threat, Risk, and Outcome), a novel threat modeling framework designed specifically for the unique challenges of Agentic AI. If you are a security engineer, AI researcher, or developer working with these advanced systems, MAESTRO is designed for you. You’ll use it to proactively identify, assess, and mitigate risks across the entire AI lifecycle, enabling you to build robust, secure, and trustworthy systems.
This framework moves beyond traditional methods that don’t always capture the complexities of AI agents, offering a structured, layer-by-layer approach. It emphasizes understanding the vulnerabilities within each layer of an agent’s architecture, how these layers interact, and the evolving nature of AI threats. By using MAESTRO, you’ll be empowered to deploy AI agents responsibly and effectively.”
Check out the full post and details on MAESTRO HERE.