As AI systems are deployed in critical applications — healthcare, finance, legal, military — understanding how they can be attacked becomes essential. AI security is a rapidly evolving field with unique challenges that traditional cybersecurity doesn't address.
Why AI Security Is Different
Traditional software has deterministic behavior: given the same input, you get the same output. AI models are probabilistic and opaque. This creates novel attack surfaces:
- Model behavior is unpredictable — Small input changes can cause wildly different outputs
- Training data shapes behavior — Poisoning training data can embed hidden backdoors
- Natural language interfaces — Text-based interactions create new injection vectors
- Emergent capabilities — Models may develop unexpected behaviors not intended by designers
- Supply chain risks — Pre-trained models, fine-tuning datasets, and plugins all introduce trust boundaries
Categories of AI Attacks
1. Input Attacks (Inference Time) • Prompt injection — Manipulating AI through crafted inputs • Adversarial examples — Inputs designed to fool classifiers • Jailbreaking — Bypassing safety filters and guardrails
2. Training Attacks • Data poisoning — Corrupting training data to embed backdoors • Model backdoors — Hidden triggers that activate specific behaviors • Training data extraction — Recovering private data from model weights
3. Infrastructure Attacks • Model theft — Extracting model weights through API queries • Side-channel attacks — Inferring model architecture from timing or resource usage • Supply chain compromise — Tampering with model files, libraries, or dependencies
4. Social Engineering • Manipulating AI agents to take unauthorized actions • Using AI-generated content for phishing and impersonation • Exploiting trust in AI outputs to spread misinformation
The Red Team Mindset
AI red teaming means thinking like an attacker: • What does this system assume about its inputs? • Where are the trust boundaries? • What would happen if the AI did the worst possible thing? • How can we make the system fail safely?