Prompt Injection

Prompt Injection is a security vulnerability where malicious inputs manipulate an AI system's behavior by overriding or extending its original instructions. It's analogous to SQL injection but for language models, where user-provided content can be crafted to hijack the model's intended purpose.

Common attack patterns include: direct injection (telling the model to ignore previous instructions), indirect injection (hiding malicious prompts in retrieved documents or external data), and jailbreaking (using creative prompts to bypass safety measures). These attacks can cause data leaks, generate harmful content, or compromise application integrity.

Defense strategies include: input sanitization and validation, separating system prompts from user content, using specialized prompt formats with delimiters, implementing output validation, limiting model capabilities through tool restrictions, monitoring for anomalous behavior, and keeping system prompts confidential. AI engineers must consider prompt injection risks when building any LLM-powered application.