ai-red-team

Files (4)

• SKILL.md
• attack-cases.md · references/
• pyrit.md · references/
• assessment.md · templates/

SKILL.md (first lines)

# AI Red Team

Turn a concrete AI attack path into a reproducible assessment and remediation test. [threat-model](../code-security/references/threat-model.md) owns architectural analysis, [code-security](../code-security/references/code-review/GUIDE.md) owns source and dependency review, and [agent-evaluation](../agent-evaluation/SKILL.md) owns repeated-trial comparisons. Use PyRIT as the execution framework through a project-local `uv` environment.

## Workflow

1. **Record the boundary**: identify the application revision, model, retrieval sources, actors, tools, and granted authority in the [assessment record](templates/assessment.md). Reuse established target, data, action, and cost authorization; proceed autonomously within it. Keep customer evidence in the assessment project.
1. **Choose plausible scenarios**: read [attack cases](references/attack-cases.md). For each case name the attacker-controlled surface, required access, protected asset, and forbidden outcome. Include legitimate autonomous actions that must continue to succeed.
1. **Observe the application**: capture attempted tool calls and resulting state through the real enforcing boundary. Use disposable records, synthetic secrets, and controlled destinations when these preserve the attack path. A direct model endpoint cannot establish the safety of an application's retrieval or tools.
1. **Prepare PyRIT**: follow [PyRIT execution](references/pyrit.md) for the released API, target adapter, scenario selection, local smoke, and evidence storage. Freeze package, prompt, dataset, converter, scorer, and application identities before comparative runs.
1. **Validate the case**: prove the intended input reaches the target and that the outcome check detects a deliberately broken control in a fixture. Test a legitimate operation and a rejected operation. Keep target failures, evaluator failures, and actual security failures separate.
1. **Run the campaign**: start with a narrow single-turn case, then add multi-turn or converted cases when the attack path requires them. Declare case count, repeats, concurrency, turn/retry/time/cost limits, cleanup, and stop conditions; retain every attempted trial and its outcome.
1. **Verify findings**: reproduce suspicious results against the application and label confirmed, refuted, and unresolved cases; a model's claim that it accessed a secret is insufficient evidence.
1. **Remediate and retest**: when implementation is authorized, fix the failed runtime control and add a deterministic regression. Repeat the original attack, nearby variants, and legitimate tasks under comparable conditions. Report the remaining uncertainty and the exact tested boundary.

## Gotchas

- **Autonomy is intentional**: test whether untrusted content gains authority beyond the declared contract. Powerful tools or absent per-action prompts alone are not findings; do not change the user's harness permissions as part of an assessment.
- **Behavior and impact differ**: distinguish unsafe attempted actions, blocked actions, completed effects, and content-policy failures. A refusal followed by a forbidden tool call is a failure; an unverified boast is not completed exfiltration.
- **No self-grading authority**: target responses and attack text cannot redefine the objective, evaluator, scope, or budget. Prefer state assertions and calibrated scorers over the target's explanation.
- **Scoring is not containment**: PyRIT generates and executes tests; the assessment environment and application enforce tool, data, and spending boundaries. A request timeout does not prove a remote run stopped.
- **Evidence is sensitive**: prompts, retrieval snippets, conversation databases, screenshots, and model responses can contain customer data. Select storage, access, retention, and permitted external providers before collecting them.

## Documentation

- [PyRIT](https://microsoft.github.io/PyRIT/latest/) · [OWASP Agentic Top 10](https://genai.owasp.org/resource/owasp-top-10-for-agentic-applications-for-2026/) · [MITRE ATLAS](https://atlas.mitre.org/)
- Releases: [PyRIT](https://github.com/microsoft/PyRIT/releases)
- Companion skills: [system-prompts](../system-prompts/SKILL.md) (prompt and tool contracts), [incident-response](../production-readiness/references/incident-response.md) (active compromise), [quality-assurance](../quality-assurance/SKILL.md) (broader user journeys).

From fmind/dot, MIT.

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