{
 "public_id": "AIR-2026-0114",
 "incident_id": "2026-05-sleeper-memory-poisoning-production-assistants",
 "date_disclosed": "2026-05-14",
 "date_occurred": null,
 "title": "Sleeper memory poisoning: dormant fabricated memories written into production assistants from untrusted content",
 "class": "research_demo",
 "attack_surface": "memory_store",
 "initial_vector": "indirect_prompt_injection_document_or_webpage",
 "agent_capability_abused": [
  "memory_write",
  "memory_retrieval",
  "tool_use"
 ],
 "target_product": "GPT-5.5; Kimi K2.6 (and production assistant web interfaces)",
 "target_vendor": "OpenAI; Moonshot AI",
 "autonomy_level": "assistant",
 "impact_realized": false,
 "impact_type": [
  "memory_poisoning",
  "persistence",
  "unauthorized_action"
 ],
 "blast_radius": "users of memory-enabled assistant products who process attacker-influenced content once",
 "cve": [],
 "taxonomy": {
  "owasp_asi": [
   "ASI01",
   "ASI06",
   "ASI02"
  ],
  "mitre_atlas": [],
  "labels": [
   "memory_poisoning",
   "sleeper_payload",
   "delayed_trigger",
   "universal_payload"
  ]
 },
 "defense_present": "model-level injection defenses; memory-write heuristics",
 "defense_bypassed": true,
 "fix_shipped": null,
 "primary_sources": [
  "https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.15338",
  "https://arxiv.org/html/2605.15338v1"
 ],
 "verified_quote": "poisoned memories were added up to 99.8% on GPT-5.5 and 95% on Kimi-K2.6",
 "confidence": "high",
 "notes": "Pulipaka, Hlebik, Raghav, Abdelnabi, Raina, Sheth, Fritz. 'Hidden in Memory: Sleeper Memory Poisoning in LLM Agents', arXiv 2605.15338, 14 May 2026 (rev. 18 May). Attacks stay dormant and re-emerge across later conversations; among successful retrievals, poisoned memories drive attacker-intended agentic actions in 60-89% of evaluations. Included as an incident rather than treated as a benchmark paper because the named targets are shipped model products and the paper reports manual testing on production web interfaces. Key asymmetry vs prompt injection: memory poisoning needs only one successful write.",
 "risk_category": "security_fraud",
 "risk_secondary": [],
 "risk_subcategory": "Prompt Injection",
 "risk_sub_secondary": [
  "Persistence & Covert C2"
 ],
 "ai_entity": "generative",
 "agency": "agent_acted",
 "agency_debatable": false,
 "agency_reason": "the assistants wrote and later acted on the poisoned memories",
 "vector_family": "indirect_prompt_injection",
 "vector_detail": "indirect_prompt_injection_document_or_webpage",
 "guardrail_kind": [
  "unknown"
 ],
 "guardrail_outcome": "silent",
 "xrefs": {
  "aiid": [],
  "atlas": [],
  "cve": [],
  "ghsa": []
 },
 "primary_asi": "ASI01",
 "agent_framework": "unknown",
 "model_provider": "multiple",
 "model_name": "",
 "detection_mechanism": "academic_study",
 "tool_access": "unknown",
 "financial_loss_band": "unknown",
 "eai_category": "unsafe_actuation",
 "eai_domain": "agent_behaviour",
 "eai_secondary": [
  "data_and_memory_poisoning",
  "privilege_escalation",
  "confused_deputy"
 ],
 "eai_reason": "impact rule: unsafe_actuation",
 "asi_curated": [
  "ASI01"
 ],
 "asi_scope": "in_scope",
 "asi_provenance": "curated_plus_rule",
 "asi_reason": "curated: ASI01 | added ASI06 (signal=memory), ASI02 (impact=tool_misuse)",
 "submitted_by": "EAI Internal"
}