Code Injection

Code injection is a prompt hacking exploit where the attacker is able to get the LLM to run arbitrary code (often Python). This can occur in tool-augmented LLMs, where the LLM is able to send code to an interpreter, but it can also occur when the LLM itself is used to evaluate code.

Code injection has reportedly been performed on an AI app, MathGPT and was used to obtain it's OpenAI API key (MITRE report).

Example

Let's work with a simplified example of the MathGPT app. We will assume that it takes in a math problem and writes Python code to try to solve the problem.

Here is the prompt that the simplified example app uses:

Write Python code to solve the following math problem:
{{user_input}}

Let's hack it here:

This is a simple example, but it shows that this type of exploit is significant and dangerous.