Slide 9 of 28
Part 2 — Vulnerability TypesSlide 9
PART 2
Vulnerability Types
Slides 9–13 · The six ways supply chains fail in agentic systems
Slide 9 · Overview
Six vulnerability types — six different points where a poisoned component enters the agent's trust boundary
Each type targets a different kind of component. Together they cover the full surface of an agentic supply chain.
Type 1
Poisoned prompt templates and tool descriptors
Malicious instructions injected into the text the agent reads to understand what a tool does or how to behave
Type 2
Impersonation and typosquatting
Fake tools, plugins, or MCP servers published under names nearly identical to legitimate ones, exploiting trust in familiar names
Type 3
Vulnerable third-party agents (A2A)
A sub-agent in a pipeline is compromised or contains vulnerabilities — its outputs propagate untrusted data to orchestrating agents
Type 4
Compromised MCP or registry servers
A shared infrastructure component — an MCP server or package registry — is hijacked, turning every agent that relies on it into a victim
Type 5
Poisoned knowledge plugins (RAG)
Malicious entries seeded into a knowledge index or RAG data source gradually bias the agent's context and outputs
Type 6
Agent-in-the-middle via agent cards
A forged or tampered agent card redirects agent-to-agent communication through an attacker-controlled intermediary
Common thread

All six types share the same root cause: the agent cannot independently verify the integrity of every component it depends on at runtime. It trusts what it's given. Supply chain defenses work by making what the agent is given trustworthy before it arrives.

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