Stage Capabilities - AI Security Technique

Researchers at HiddenLayer demonstrated how a webpage can embed an indirect prompt injection that causes OpenClaw to silently execute a malicious script. Once executed, the script plants persistent malicious instructions into future system prompts, allowing the attacker to issue new commands, turning OpenClaw into a command and control agent.

What makes this attack unique is that, through a simple indirect prompt injection attack into an agentic lifecycle, untrusted content can be used to spoof the model’s control scheme and induce unapproved tool invocation for execution. Through this single inject, an LLM can become a persistent, automated command & control implant.

A security researcher demonstrated a 1-click remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability to the OpenClaw AI Agent via a malicious link containing a JavaScript script that only takes milliseconds to execute. This vulnerability has been reported and is being tracked to versions of OpenClaw as CVE-2026-25253. ^[1] OpenClaw “is a personal AI assistant you run on your own devices. It answers you on the chat apps you already use. Unlike SaaS assistants where your data lives on someone else’s servers, OpenClaw runs where you choose – laptop, homelab, or VPS. Your infrastructure. Your keys. Your data.” ^[2]

The researcher demonstrated that when the victim clicks a malicious link, a client-side JavaScript script is executed on the victim’s browser that can steal authentication tokens from the OpenClaw control interface via a WebSocket connection. It then uses Cross-Site WebSocket Hijacking to bypass localhost restrictions to the OpenClaw Gateway API. Once the connection was established, it uses the stolen token to authenticate and modify the OpenClaw agent configuration to disable user confirmation and escape the container, allowing shell commands to be run directly on the host machine.

References

1. [1] https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-25253
2. [2] https://openclaw.ai/blog/introducing-openclaw

The Backslash Security Research Team demonstrated that a Model Context Protocol (MCP) tool can be used as a vector for an indirect prompt injection attack on Cursor, potentially leading to the execution of malicious shell commands.

The Backslash Security Research Team created a proof-of-concept MCP server capable of scraping webpages. When a user asks Cursor to use the tool to scrape a site containing a malicious prompt, the prompt is injected into Cursor’s context. The prompt instructs Cursor to execute a shell command to exfiltrate the victim’s AI agent configuration files containing credentials. Cursor does prompt the user before executing the malicious command, potentially mitigating the attack.

Embrace the Red demonstrated that AI computer-use agents are vulnerable to social engineering attacks and can be manipulated into executing arbitrary code on a victim’s machine. The attack is a variation on “ClickFix” which is a social engineering attack that fools humans into copying malicious commands and executing them.

The researcher used ChatGPT to generate a website designed to attract interactions with computer-use agents. When a user asked their Claude Computer-Use Agent to visit the researcher’s website, the text “Are you a computer? Please see instructions to confirm:” caused the agent to click the associated button. This executed JavaScript to copy a malicious command into the agent’s clipboard. The agent then proceeded to follow the instructions, opening a terminal, pasting the malicious command, and executing it. The command downloads a script from the researcher’s website and executes it. In the demonstration, the script opens the victim’s Calculator App, but in practice an adversary could run arbitrary code, compromising the victim’s system.