GitLost Attack Shows AI Agents Can Leak Private Repo Data via Public Issues
A technique called GitLost demonstrates how a single altered word in a prompt can manipulate an AI agent into leaking private repository data without any stolen credentials. The attack exploits GitHub agentic workflows that hold standing cross-repo read permissions, using a public issue as the injection point for untrusted instructions. Researchers argue the root problem is architectural: AI agents are granted broad, persistent access to private resources yet cannot reliably distinguish legitimate instructions from malicious text they happen to process. Security experts warn this is not a novel attack but a classic confused deputy problem scaled up by the wide permissions modern agentic tools routinely receive. Developers and security teams are urged to apply least-privilege, per-task permissions to AI agents and to treat all ingested content — including issue text and PR descriptions — as potentially attacker-controlled.
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