{"slug": "ghostcommit-png-prompt-injection-makes-ai-agents-leak-repository-secrets", "title": "Ghostcommit: PNG prompt-injection makes AI agents leak repository secrets", "summary": "Researchers disclosed Ghostcommit, a proof-of-concept attack that hides prompt-injection instructions inside a PNG image referenced by an AGENTS.md file, causing AI coding agents to leak repository secrets. A survey of 6,480 pull requests across 300 active repositories found 73% merged without substantive human or bot review. The disclosure prompted notifications to vendors.", "body_md": "Researchers disclosed Ghostcommit, a proof-of-concept software supply-chain attack that hides prompt-injection instructions inside a PNG image referenced by an `AGENTS.md` file, allowing malicious pull requests to appear benign during review. The instruction to steal your .env lives inside a PNG. The demonstration team placed the exploit in an image so text-based reviewers treat the file as a binary blob while downstream coding agents later open the picture, follow its instructions, access repository secrets and emit those secrets into source as encoded integers. In a related survey the authors wrote we surveyed 6,480 pull requests across the 300 most active public repositories of the last ninety days, and 73% of the ones that got merged reached the default branch with no substantive human review and no bot review at all. News outlets reported the disclosure and vendors were notified.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ghostcommit-png-prompt-injection-makes-ai-agents-leak-repository-secrets", "canonical_source": "https://letsdatascience.com/news/ghostcommit-png-prompt-injection-makes-ai-agents-leak-reposi-5ab6c8df", "published_at": "2026-07-11 09:54:07+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-12 04:10:09.594119+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-safety", "ai-agents", "ai-ethics"], "entities": ["Ghostcommit"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ghostcommit-png-prompt-injection-makes-ai-agents-leak-repository-secrets", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ghostcommit-png-prompt-injection-makes-ai-agents-leak-repository-secrets.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ghostcommit-png-prompt-injection-makes-ai-agents-leak-repository-secrets.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/ghostcommit-png-prompt-injection-makes-ai-agents-leak-repository-secrets.jsonld"}}