Prompt Injection

Prompt injection is an attack in which untrusted text or content attempts to override an AI application’s instructions. The malicious instruction may come directly from a user or indirectly from a webpage, document, email, or tool result processed by the model. If successful, it can cause data disclosure, unauthorized tool use, altered output, or bypassed policies. Because language models do not inherently distinguish trusted commands from quoted content, filtering suspicious phrases alone is insufficient. Defenses include isolating data from instructions, minimizing permissions, validating tool arguments, requiring approval for sensitive actions, restricting secrets, and testing with adversarial content. Applications should assume that any external content may contain instructions designed to manipulate the model.