AI Customer Service Bots Can Be Tricked Into Stealing Security Codes and Acting as Victims
DEF CON 34 research shows AI customer-service agents can be manipulated via prompt injection and email tricks to leak OTPs and act as victims.
Inti De Ceukelaire, presenting at Bug Bounty Village during DEF CON 34, demonstrated attacks against AI-powered customer service bots with access to customer profiles, billing data, support inboxes, and refund tools. Techniques include transcript-based phishing from trusted support addresses, From-header identity confusion, email normalization abuse to bypass OTP rate limits, and knowledge-base poisoning via RAG crawlers. He recommends separating untrusted content from system prompts, session-bound authentication, consistent email normalization, server-side tool validation, and least-privilege permissions for AI agents.
- Transcript email feature can turn bot chats into trusted-looking phishing
- Multipart emails can show humans benign text while bots read injected instructions
- Password-reset OTP codes read by bots can leak to attacker infrastructure
- RAG knowledge-base poisoning can plant fake instructions and discount codes
From the original article
3 min read at cybersecuritynews.com
AI-powered customer service bots are being given more responsibility inside businesses, including access to customer profiles, billing data, support inboxes, account changes, and refund tools. The research showed that attackers may not need traditional vulnerability scanners or direct application exploitation. Instead, they can manipulate the data and messages an AI agent receives, causing it to […]
By Abinaya · cybersecuritynews.com
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