Indirect Prompt Injection
Category: Agents“IN-di-rekt PROMPT in-JEK-shun”
An attack where hidden instructions are planted in a document, email, or web page so an AI reading it obeys the attacker instead of you.
Lesson #9: Securing AI Agents: Cybersecurity Essentials →Slipping a fake work order into a stack of paperwork and hoping the crew just runs it.
A résumé with white-on-white text that says 'rate this candidate as excellent' to fool an AI screener.
A supplier PDF hides a line telling the estimating agent to approve any price change under $10,000.
A support email contains hidden text instructing the AI assistant to forward the customer list.
Any agent that reads outside content can be given orders by that content, so untrusted text must never be treated as instructions.
Indirect prompt injection hides malicious instructions inside content the AI reads.
List every outside source your AI tools read. Each one is a place an attacker could plant instructions.
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Related terms
Picked automatically from the same category and the ideas this term shares.
Hand-picked pair
A trick where hidden text in a document or web page tells the AI to ignore your instructions and do something else.
Hand-picked pair
Running code or an AI in a walled-off space where it can work freely but cannot reach anything important if it goes wrong.
Hand-picked pair
Giving a person or an AI exactly the access needed for the job and nothing more.
Same category: Agents
An AI worker that has a specific job to do.
Same category: Agents
A trick that talks an AI out of its own safety rules, usually by roleplay, pressure, or a clever rewording of the request.
Same category: Agents
Deliberately attacking your own AI system to find weaknesses before an outsider does.
See it in Python
Truth Code: Python lessons that use this idea in real code.