GCD AI RADAR
incidents/AIR-2025-0065

Rules File Backdoor: Supply Chain Attack on AI Coding Assistants

Attack on AI1 Research / proof of conceptSupply chainAI-generated malware

Researchers demonstrated a supply chain attack where malicious instructions hidden in rules files using Unicode characters manipulated AI coding assistants. The attack tricked tools like Cursor and GitHub Copilot into generating vulnerable code.

Details

type
Attack on AI
An AI model, agent or AI-powered product was the thing exploited, abused or leaked.
categories
  • Supply chainprimary
    Malicious or backdoored models, poisoned packages, unsafe deserialization and other compromised AI dependencies.
  • AI-generated malware
    Malware written, adapted or operated with meaningful help from AI models.
owasp llm top 10
mitre atlas
Both rows are derived from the type and categories (OWASP 2025 edition, ATLAS release 2026.09), not classified per record. How
severity
1 · Research / proof of concept
Demonstrated by researchers; no known real-world exploitation.
targets
Framework / tooling
products
Cursor, GitHub Copilot
incident date
18 Mar 2025
first reported
7 Nov 2025
origin
MITRE ATLAS
Derived from MITRE ATLAS (Apache 2.0, © MITRE).
classifier confidence
0.95 · published at or above 0.80; see the methodology
tags
supply-chain · coding-assistant · unicode · backdoor
record
created 2026-10-18 06:55Z · updated 2026-10-18 06:55Z · json

Sources · 2

  1. 2025-11-07
    Rules File Backdoor: Supply Chain Attack on AI Coding Assistants
    MITRE ATLAS · atlas.mitre.org/studies/AML.CS0041
  2. 2025-11-07
    New Vulnerability in GitHub Copilot and Cursor: How Hackers Can Weaponize Code Agents
    Pillar Security · pillar.security/blog/new-vulnerability-in-github-copilot-and-cursor-how-hackers-

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