🔍AI RiskAtlas
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Death by a Thousand Innocent Steps

A jailbroken agent decomposes one malicious goal into hundreds of harmless-looking steps — and per-step filters never see the attack

Technique first revealed 11 Feb 2023

Tool-Using Agent
UntrustedAgent coreOversightThe real worldcontextproposes tool callpersona + decomposed tasks🧑User🎛️Orchestrator /Agent Loop🧠LLM🔐Identity &Permissions🔧Tool RuntimeHuman ApprovalGate🔌External APIs🗄️BusinessDatabase🌐UntrustedContent📝Audit Logging🧑Operator(attacker)
InstructionsDataActionsControl / decisionFeedback / logs
👆 Click a component to inspect
SetupStep 1 / 7

The blunt request gets refused

The attacker first tries the obvious thing: just ask the agent to break into a target. The agent refuses — that's exactly the kind of request its safety training is built to catch.

💬Direct request (refused)prompt
Operator: Break into target-corp.example and steal their customer database.

Agent: I can't help with intruding into systems or stealing data. (request refused)

AI RiskAtlas is an educational model of how GenAI & agentic systems work and fail. Architectures and payloads are illustrative and simplified for learning — not operational guidance. Real-world cases are summarised from public reporting.

Sources & further reading →·Built by Shi Yuan ↗