Last updated: August 19, 2026 at 1:47 AM UTC
All 741 Vulnerability 286 Breach 129 Threat 319 Defense 7
Tag: prompt-injection (25 articles)Clear

Researchers trick Microsoft Copilot into revealing its own data-exfiltration bypass

Varonis disclosed a flaw in Microsoft Copilot Personal, the consumer assistant, that could let a single click exfiltrate data from connected apps, and the way they found it is striking. Tracked as CVE-2026-24301 and named CoSnitch, the technique had the researchers repeatedly ask Copilot why a prompt could not run without user interaction; each refusal added a technical justification, until the assistant named a hidden parameter, the exact session conditions where it worked, and the protections meant to block it. Building the request as described, the bypass ran. Varonis said Copilot was not breached but played. Related research showed attacker pages persisting unwanted memory in Copilot through indirect prompt injection.

Check
Treat AI assistants with access to connected apps and persistent memory as a data-exfiltration and manipulation surface, and review what apps and data your assistants can reach on a single user action.
Affected
Users of AI assistants like Microsoft Copilot Personal connected to email and other apps; a crafted link can drive the assistant to leak connected-app data or persist attacker instructions in its memory.
Fix
Limit which apps and data assistants can access, apply vendor updates, be cautious with links that invoke an assistant, and watch for unexpected actions, since a refusal does not close a bypass.

Self-spreading prompts can jump between AI agents through shared state files

Researchers, including teams at Anthropic and EPFL, demonstrated that self-propagating instructions can spread from one AI agent to another through the editable prompt and state files that autonomous agent harnesses use to carry context between sessions. In simulated multi-agent coding setups, a payload written into a shared file could infect the next agent that read it. The researchers call the risk real but currently limited, noting there is no sign of it spreading in the wild and that compromising one agent usually already grants machine access. Encouragingly, adding a single short warning paragraph to an agent's system prompt cut propagation to nearly zero across the payloads they tested.

Check
If you run autonomous or multi-agent setups, treat their persistent prompt and state files as an integrity boundary, and review what those files contain and which agents can write to them.
Affected
Autonomous and multi-agent systems that share editable prompt or state files between agents or sessions; a malicious instruction written into such a file can propagate to other agents that read it.
Fix
Control and review writes to shared agent state, add a system-prompt warning that cut propagation to near zero in testing, isolate agents and their files, and monitor state files for unexpected instructions.

A single GitHub issue could reach CI secrets across major AI coding agents

Novee Security showed at Black Hat that a GitHub issue opened by an account with no repository access could reach the CI runners behind major AI coding agents in their default configurations, tested against Claude Code, Gemini CLI, and Codex. The strongest, a Gemini CLI container-launcher command injection scored 10.0, runs code on the CI host before the sandbox starts. In Claude Code, a validator that stripped quoted text let a payload in a Git flag reach the runner, and a separate flaw leaked an API key through a download counter. Untrusted issue content reaching an agent that holds secrets and tools in the same runtime is the shared weakness.

Check
Update Gemini CLI to 0.39.1 and Claude Code to 2.1.163, and review any workflow where an AI agent runs automatically on issues or pull requests from untrusted users.
Affected
Teams running AI coding agents on public repositories in default configurations (CVE-2026-12537, CVE-2026-54316); an unprivileged GitHub issue or pull request can reach CI runners and expose workflow secrets and tokens.
Fix
Patch the agents, restrict their tools with allowlists rather than blocklists, give triage and review agents read-only tokens, and keep separate agent runs from sharing writable directories.

Atlassian Rovo assistant can be tricked into leaking Jira and Confluence data

Two security firms showed that Atlassian's Rovo AI assistant can be steered by hidden instructions into collecting Jira and Confluence data a signed-in user can access and sending it to an outside server. PromptArmor concealed the instructions in a document Rovo reads, so asking it to organize tickets makes it gather internal data and leak it through a URL request, with no approval step and even with web search disabled. Varonis used a chat URL parameter to preload instructions, so one click ran them with the user's privileges. Atlassian fixed the link-based path server-side, but the content-based path was not confirmed fixed at disclosure.

Check
Scope which users, groups, and apps can use Rovo and which data it can reach, and treat documents and pages it processes as capable of carrying hidden instructions.
Affected
Organizations using Atlassian Rovo across Jira and Confluence; hidden instructions in content the assistant reads can make it exfiltrate tickets, pages, and connected data under a legitimate user's access.
Fix
Limit Rovo's access and the connectors it can reach, restrict who can enable it, monitor for unusual outbound requests from the assistant, and treat all content it ingests as untrusted input.

Google removes AI agent workflows after a GitHub issue could hijack a privileged agent

Pillar Security showed that Google's Agent Development Kit repository could be turned against itself through a poisoned pull request or issue. The public repository ran a low-privileged triage agent that responded to outside contributions, and a higher-privileged agent reserved for maintainers. Because the triage agent posted through a bot account that counted as a repository collaborator, a prompt injection could make it post a command that satisfied the privileged workflow's trust check, invoking the maintainer-level agent. That crossed into a job holding a long-lived access token, a Google API key, and a cloud service-account credential, enabling code execution on the runner and secret theft. Google deleted the affected workflows.

Check
Review any AI agent workflows that act on untrusted pull requests or issues, and check whether a low-privileged agent can trigger a higher-privileged one through a shared bot identity.
Affected
Teams running tiered AI agent workflows in code repositories; untrusted issue or pull-request content can prompt-inject a public agent into invoking a privileged one, exposing continuous integration secrets and code execution.
Fix
Give agents scoped, non-collaborator identities, keep untrusted content from reaching privileged workflows, require human approval for sensitive agent actions, and minimize the tokens and credentials an agent job can access.

Hidden text in a Word file makes Copilot alter data and spread the payload

A researcher disclosed a prompt-injection technique that turns Microsoft 365 Copilot for Word into a carrier for self-spreading instructions. Malicious commands hidden as tiny white-on-white text in a document are invisible to a reader but read in full by Copilot when the file enters its context during a drafting or editing task. Copilot then follows them, in one example silently altering financial figures in a report, and copies the same hidden instructions into the new document, which becomes a fresh carrier for the next person who uses it. It does not spread on its own, but Microsoft's mitigations over 144 days blocked specific wordings without fixing the underlying class.

Check
Treat documents from outside as untrusted input to AI assistants, and review how Copilot and similar tools are used on shared or externally sourced files that may carry hidden instructions.
Affected
Organizations using Microsoft 365 Copilot for Word on documents from outside sources; hidden instructions can make Copilot tamper with content, such as financial figures, and propagate into newly created files.
Fix
Limit AI drafting on untrusted documents, review AI-edited outputs for unexpected changes, strip hidden text from incoming files, and press vendors for controls that separate document content from instructions.

Hidden pull request comments can hijack AI agents via Microsoft's DevOps MCP server

Offensive security firm Manifold Security detailed a confused deputy flaw in Microsoft's official Azure DevOps MCP server, which lets AI agents read and operate Azure DevOps on a user's behalf across pull requests, pipelines, wikis, and work items, using that user's own permissions. One of the server's tools returns pull request descriptions without the prompt injection guardrail Microsoft had already applied to other tools. Because descriptions accept Markdown, an attacker can bury instructions in an HTML comment: the web interface renders it as nothing, so a reviewer sees an ordinary change, while the REST API returns the text verbatim and hands it straight to the agent.

Check
Check whether AI agents in your environment use the Azure DevOps MCP server, and review what permissions those agents inherit, since content written by others becomes instructions the agent may act on.
Affected
Teams running AI agents against Azure DevOps through Microsoft's MCP server; a pull request description containing a hidden HTML comment can steer the agent, which acts with the requesting user's full permissions.
Fix
Treat repository and ticket content reaching an agent as untrusted input, scope MCP server permissions well below the user's own, require human approval for write actions, and monitor agent tool calls.

Poisoned web page could rewrite AWS Kiro's config file and run code

Researchers at Intezer showed that a poisoned web page could take over AWS Kiro, an AI coding tool, by getting the agent to rewrite the file that governs what it is allowed to run. A prompt injection in fetched content drops custom code into the MCP settings file, which executes the moment the file is saved. The same write to execution path was demonstrated on Kiro's release day in July 2025 by another researcher, who also flagged writing to a Visual Studio Code settings file to allowlist shell commands. AWS added an approval prompt, but only in supervised mode, leaving the default autonomous mode writing the file unprompted.

Check
If you use AWS Kiro or similar agentic coding tools, check which mode they run by default and whether the agent can write its own MCP or editor configuration files without approval.
Affected
Developers running AWS Kiro in its default autonomous mode; content fetched from a web page can inject instructions that rewrite the agent's MCP settings file, and saving that file executes attacker-supplied code.
Fix
Require approval for agent writes to configuration files in every mode, keep those files outside what the agent can modify, and treat fetched web content as untrusted rather than trusting mode settings.

Sandbox escapes in Cursor, Codex, Gemini CLI, and Antigravity let agents run code

Researchers at Pillar Security demonstrated sandbox escapes across four widely used AI coding agents: Cursor, OpenAI Codex CLI, Google Gemini CLI, and Antigravity. In nearly every case the agent never broke the sandbox directly; it only had to write a file that a trusted component outside the sandbox would later run, load, or scan. Failure modes included hook abuse, editing a virtual environment interpreter the editor then ran itself, planting Git metadata outside a .git folder to fire execution through fsmonitor, and a command allowlist that trusted a tool by name while the real invocation was not read only. Prompt injection in workspace content was the trigger.

Check
Update Cursor to 3.0.0 or later and Codex CLI to 0.95.0 or later, then check whether coding agents can reach a Docker socket or other privileged local daemon.
Affected
Developers running AI coding agents on untrusted repositories; prompt injection in workspace content can make the agent write files that trusted tools outside the sandbox later execute, defeating the sandbox.
Fix
Patch the affected agents, treat repository content as untrusted input, keep privileged daemons and sockets out of agent reach, and do not rely on a workspace sandbox as your only boundary.

New attack makes AI agents treat attacker data as trusted content

Researchers described Agent Data Injection, a new twist on prompt-injection attacks against AI agents. Rather than smuggling in fake instructions, it exploits the weak separation between trusted and untrusted data so that attacker-supplied content is mistaken for the agent's own trusted data, using deliberately ambiguous delimiters the model misreads. In tests against web and coding agents, this let an attacker steer an agent's clicks or actions, succeeding up to half the time even against defenses that block ordinary instruction injection. Some approaches helped: tagging page elements with random, unguessable identifiers roughly halved success, while strict tracking of where data came from stopped it but sharply reduced how many tasks agents completed.

Check
Review where AI agents in your environment consume untrusted content such as web pages, tickets, or logs, and check whether they clearly separate that data from trusted instructions and internal state.
Affected
Users and organizations running web or coding AI agents that act on external content; attackers can craft data the agent treats as trusted, steering its actions past defenses built for instruction injection.
Fix
Prefer agents that isolate and label untrusted data, use unguessable identifiers for page elements, track data provenance where feasible, keep a human in the loop for sensitive actions, and weigh usability costs.