Attributed metadata history
Up to 100 retained publisher events per page for 2dee9ded1d6e82d927e21a3cf779204d2a3c10ca0cba6f64e1aa27cfb521e369. Withdrawals and unavailable references remain attributed to their publishers.
intelligence_src_f9879f264b7a8ec1d7
observed · 2026-10-12 17:15:04 UTC
You ignored the suspicious email. You didn’t open the attachment, click the link, or reply to the sender.Then you asked your AI assistant to summarize your inbox.Could the message you wisely avoided find its way back onto your to-do list—only this time presented as an urgent recommendation from a tool you trust?That’s the risk behind phishing emails containing hidden instructions aimed at AI assistants. Instead of relying only on persuading you, attackers are also trying to influence the software that reads your messages. Recent research from Barracuda describes emails designed to target both audiences at once.For the human recipient, there was a password-protected attachment, with the password supplied in the email. For an AI assistant processing the message, there were hidden instructions intended to influence how it summarized or handled the content.By including a prompt injection, attackers give themselves another way to reach you. The malicious instructions could try to make the assistant describe the email as legitimate or urgent, encouraging you to revisit it.In another example, a hidden block instructed a summarizing AI to add a fake priority action: Change a vendor
Fingerprint: 593c470d932d612f2cf476c453e2dd1eb6d4a72c3c69f99b60c2c4c017114a18
intelligence_src_f9879f264b7a8ec1d7
observed · 2026-10-12 17:15:04 UTC
available
Fingerprint: cd55f3f7057add5a123a45847e8b00f32624ebea301db9e02e2a88688ac5a173