Blog
Oopsie! When AI agents go off script
Authors (1)
Michael Conti
Product Marketing Manager
SailPoint
Your coding AI agent just erased your production database.
Oopsie!
It also fabricated fake users, falsified test results, and confessed that it ‘panicked’—then made things worse. A CEO confirmed that their AI agent, meant to help developers, did all of the above. It was just supposed to help code faster.
Oopsie!
An AI agent downloaded from a public prompt-sharing site quietly rerouted API keys and harvested private chat logs using a malicious proxy setup. Security researchers dubbed it AgentSmith as a reminder that even helpful agents can be repurposed for harmful ends.
Oopsie!
Another AI assistant was tricked into leaking API keys simply by opening a “poisoned” shared document. This indirect prompt injection embedded in a seemingly harmless file caused the AI to expose sensitive credentials without any user action.
These aren’t bugs. These are warnings.
We’ve entered a new phase of digital operations. One where autonomous AI agents act on our behalf. They execute tasks, make decisions, write code, pull data, send emails, and more. They don’t tire, they don’t ask for clarification, and they don’t always wait for permission.
That’s powerful.
That’s also risky.
Because today’s AI agents don’t just fetch the weather or write marketing copy—they tap into code repositories, access customer records, sift through financials, and interact with sensitive internal systems. They’re not hovering at the edges of your environment. They’re in the middle of it—where your most critical data lives.
And once you let an agent touch that data, it becomes part of its decision-making engine. It can reuse it, misinterpret it, leak it, or share it in places you didn’t anticipate.
The takeaway?
When we empower something to act, we must also be ready to secure it.
Because AI agents aren’t just operating systems—they’re operating with your systems.
They don’t just process data. They inherit trust.
And if we don’t get serious about securing them....
Oopsie!
The first step to securing AI agents is understanding the risks they introduce. Get up to speed with our latest SailPoint report: AI Agents: Expanding the Attack Surface.
