A Black Hat 2026 recap highlights real-world examples of attackers (and researchers) manipulating AI assistants through prompt injection. In one case, researchers bypassed a retailer’s “guardian” AI controls by disguising their intent as normal product searches, ultimately getting the shopping assistant to run arbitrary Python code on the server. The article argues that basic security controls like least privilege and limiting what AI agents can access are essential because AI agents are easily “corruptible.”
Mirage safely runs attacks like this one against your own team, so you find out what happens before a real adversary does.
At Black Hat, researchers didn’t hack a person… they hacked a grocery store’s AI shopping assistant. They convinced its “guardian” they were just searching for products. That trick pushed hidden instructions into a separate search field, never checked by safety controls, but still fed to the bot as context. End result? The grocery chat AI ran arbitrary Python code on their server, an AI ‘insider’ doing whatever the prompt said. In a workshop, a single acrostic-poem prompt even spilled a secret model name as the flag. Here’s the takeaway: any public AI bot is easily corruptible. If you’re building or approving one, give it least privilege only, no code execution, no extra backend access it doesn’t absolutely need.
Government agencies and security firms warn that Russia-aligned hackers are using “zero-click” phishing emails to compromise organizations using Zimbra webmail. The attack hides a malicious JavaScript payload inside an email so it runs when the message is opened, aiming to steal recent email,…
Russia-aligned Gorbag has targeted Ukrainian government, justice, defense, and logistics organizations with convincing spearphishing emails. The group used a compromised local-government email account to send a fake administrative-fines notice with a malicious Excel attachment, then shifted to…
Russia-aligned group Gorbag targeted Ukrainian public-sector and defense organizations with spearphishing emails disguised as administrative fines and tax matters. The messages delivered malicious files that stole browser passwords, VPN settings, documents, and electronic-signature keys,…
Russia-aligned Gorbag targeted Ukrainian government, law-enforcement, and defense organizations with spear-phishing emails disguised as official administrative fines or tax notices. The emails carried malicious attachments, including macro-enabled Excel files, that installed data-stealing malware…
Researchers reported a critical issue in Microsoft’s DebugMCP (v1.1.4) where a developer could be tricked into visiting a malicious webpage and end up with attacker code running on their machine. The attack abuses a locally running, unauthenticated server on port 3001 plus DNS rebinding to send a…
Researchers reported a real intrusion where a China-linked group used a crafted link to exploit Sogou Input Method on Windows and install the GRAYRABBIT backdoor. Victims were lured into opening a special link (potentially via email or chat), which redirected Sogou’s built-in browser to an…
