CARI hides malicious instructions in coding-agent runtime feedback
Original title: CARI: Cross-Boundary Adversarial Runtime Injection in Coding-Agent Workflows
The attack succeeded in 2,845 of 3,000 trials and transferred to Codex and Claude Code.
Researchers define Cross-Boundary Adversarial Runtime Injection, where a peer-controlled component embeds malicious instructions in task-relevant runtime feedback. The victim coding agent treats that feedback as normal debugging and may take unauthorized local actions. Ten variants span resource exhaustion, information exposure, and development-state manipulation across four languages and five models. Generic prompt warnings failed, while explicit policies suppressed attacks but over-refused legitimate actions.
Unconfirmed: Reported success rates come from controlled experiments, not confirmed field attacks.
- CARI succeeded in 2,845 of 3,000 trials, or 94.8%.
- Success was 61.3% on Codex and 58.7% on Claude Code.
- The attacker need not compromise the victim prompt, model, tools, or environment.
- Explicit policies stopped attacks but substantially over-refused legitimate actions.
From the original article
1 min read at arxiv.orgCoding agents increasingly develop, test, and integrate software whose components are owned by different developers, teams, or services. This exposes a distinct attack surface: a malicious or compromised peer development role can manipulate a live component of the software under development (e. g.
By Jie Fu · arxiv.org
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