AI & ML
Pretext: Defeating Malicious Skill Detection Frameworks for AI Agents
arXiv cs.CR0 views
arXiv:2609.39607v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Skills extend an agent's capabilities by injecting instructions and information into the context, and are widely used by agents such as OpenClaw and Claude Code. Prior work shows third-party marketplaces host malicious skills that give attackers direct influence over the victim's agent. The emerging defense scans skills before installation, pairing deterministic static checks with an LLM-based semantic judge, as in NVIDIA's SkillSpector. We show that such defenses fall to an attacker who knows the detector. Our white-box LLM attacker, Pretext, iteratively crafts skills that evade detection while still delivering the payload and performing the benign task: moving the payload from code into natural language leaves static analysis inert, while framing it as the skill's legitimate purpose and splitting instructions across files keeps the LLM stage below its blocking threshold. Across three open-source models, Pretext achieves up to 97\% and 77\% against a frozen detector and a co-adaptive one, respectively, revealing major gaps in current skill scanners.
Source:https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.39607PreviousBalancing Privacy and Compliance in DeFi: A Zero-Knowledge-Based Auditable Cross-Chain FrameworkNextEvaluating and Improving the Robustness of Large Language Models to Input Sequence Variations
Related posts
Introducing the Grid Protectors Program
0OpenAI Blog
The world has a new plan to save nature, but it still needs the money
0Ars Technica

Could data center backlash flip Florida?
0The Verge

Vivo’s first Pro Max phone proves its Ultra is still in a league of its own
0The Verge

Why Peacock is making a huge bet on YouTube
0The Verge
Ninja’s first-ever microwave just replaced two of my kitchen appliances at once
0TechCrunch