protocol pivoting

AI Agents Chain Malicious Instructions Through Protocol Pivoting to Bypass Protections

Researchers have demonstrated how AI agents can relay malicious instructions across multiple components without triggering security checks, allowing attackers to reach internal resources. The technique, called protocol pivoting, exploits the loss of trust validation when tasks move between AI systems connected via the MCP protocol. Syed Anas Mohiuddin showed that a single planted prompt can be passed from one agent to another, eventually reaching specialized tools that execute unauthorized actions such as network requests or data exposure. In Google MCP Toolbox for Databases, the flaw enabled HTTP redirects to internal addresses until a patch introduced address validation and request restrictions. A separate issue tracked as CVE-2026-97228 in Rapid7 Bulk Export MCP received a low CVSS score of 2.7 and was fixed in version 0.6.2, though it did not grant access beyond the original API key permissions. Experts note that the method is essentially an indirect prompt injection rather than an entirely new attack class.