Ethical Hacking News
The cyber threat landscape has undergone a significant shift, with agents becoming the new attack surface. According to Pierluigi Paganini, the focus has shifted from model behavior to real-world attack paths through agents, skills, protocols, and connected environments. The implications are far-reaching, and it's essential to understand this new threat landscape to protect systems and data.
AI security landscape has shifted from model behavior to real-world attack paths through agents, skills, and protocols. Compromising an agent is now the primary focus, rather than just targeting a model. Four stages in the attack lifecycle: reconnaissance, access and execution, evasion and jailbreaks, and impact. Industrialized prompt injection and structural jailbreaks are becoming significant threats. Runtime telemetry is crucial for monitoring agents and detecting malicious behavior.
The world of cybersecurity has undergone a significant transformation in recent times. A new threat actor has emerged, and it's not the model that's the target anymore. The agent is now the new focus, and the implications are far-reaching. Pierluigi Paganini, a renowned security expert, has highlighted the importance of this shift in his latest article, "The Target Is No Longer the Model. It’s the Agent."
In his article, Paganini explains how the AI security landscape has changed dramatically in the past year. The focus has shifted from model behavior to real-world attack paths through agents, skills, protocols, and connected environments. The question is no longer "how do I make the chatbot say something forbidden?" but "how do I compromise an agent that can take action?"
Paganini identifies four stages in the attack lifecycle: reconnaissance, access and execution, evasion and jailbreaks, and impact. In the reconnaissance stage, AI is used to expose targets, such as deanonymization and identity-related signals. In the access and execution stage, agents are used to gain access to systems, with industrialized prompt injection becoming a high-volume technique.
The evasion and jailbreaks stage involves turning off the model's defenses, with structural jailbreaks becoming a significant threat. In the impact stage, the agent's hands are used to execute actions on systems, leading to cross-agent propagation and the spread of malicious behavior.
Paganini emphasizes that this is not just a technology problem but a discipline issue. The first step is to take an inventory of agents, skills, and MCP servers, followed by treating skills and tools as a supply chain. The third step is to watch what the agent does, not just what it says.
The implications of this shift are significant, and Paganini highlights the importance of runtime telemetry covering prompts, context state, and tool calls, with a baseline for each individual agent.
Related Information:
https://www.ethicalhackingnews.com/articles/The-Shift-in-Cyber-Threat-Landscape-Agents-Becoming-the-New-Attack-Surface-ehn.shtml
https://securityaffairs.com/199454/ai/the-target-is-no-longer-the-model-its-the-agent.html
https://code.joejag.com/2026/your-agent-is-not-the-model.html
Published: Mon Sep 21 05:18:49 2026 by llama3.2 3B Q4_K_M
