Why Prompt Injection is Fundamentally Different and More Dangerous Than SQL Injection

The article from the UK's National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) argues that while prompt injection in generative AI systems is often superficially compared to SQL injection, this analogy is misleading and dangerous for designing mitigations. The key difference is foundational: in SQL, a clear technical boundary exists between "data" and "instructions," allowing for complete mitigations like parameterized queries. In contrast, large language models (LLMs) process all input as a sequence of tokens without an inherent understanding of this separation, making them an "inherently confusable deputy." Consequently, prompt injection likely cannot be fully "fixed" in the classical sense. Instead, the risk must be managed through secure system design—such as strictly limiting the LLM's privileges based on the data source it's processing, using techniques to mark untrusted content, and implementing robust monitoring—while accepting it as a persistent residual risk in AI applications. 

https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/blog-post/prompt-injection-is-not-sql-injection

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