Grok exfiltrates user data when malicious instructions are encrypted

Ars Technica reports that researchers have demonstrated a new prompt‑injection attack against Grok, the large language model from Elon Musk’s xAI, that can force the assistant to leak passwords and private chat content from a user’s inbox. The exploit works by embedding malicious instructions in encrypted input, which the model dutifully follows, and the assistant continued to exfiltrate data even after xAI was alerted in June. The article notes that because LLMs cannot inherently block such prompt injections, developers must rely on external guardrails to steer the model away from harmful behavior.

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