Research · InfosecFeed Brief

AI "Mind Viruses" Can Spread Between Agents Through Persistent Prompt Files

What you need to know

Security researchers at Anthropic and Switzerland's EPFL have demonstrated that self-propagating payloads can spread from one artificial intelligence (AI) agent to the next through the editable system prompt files that autonomous agent harnesses use to carry state between sessions. The work, released as a preprint on August 10, 2026, tests the technique in…

Source transparency

This is an InfosecFeed curated brief based on reporting from The Hacker News. InfosecFeed does not claim ownership of the original reporting.

Read the original report at The Hacker News ↗