Supply chain attack
Also called software supply chain attack, supply-chain compromise
An attack that reaches you through software or a service you already trust, by tampering with it before it gets to you.
Nobody builds software from nothing. Every program leans on libraries, tools and services made by other people, and each of those leans on more. A supply chain attack goes after one of those suppliers. The attacker tampers with something you already trust, and you install it yourself.
It works because the victim does nothing unusual. One build tool that developers install millions of times a week was published with malicious code inside after its publishing token was stolen. The bad versions were up for 4 hours.
AI adds new links to the chain. An agent loads model files, plugins and tool servers, and some of them arrive while it is running. So the defence is the old one, applied to the new items: know what each agent loads, take it from a source you have checked, and pin the version, so that an update only arrives when a person approves it.
For example
A team's AI agent installs the newest version of a tool server each morning. An attacker takes over the maintainer's account and publishes an altered version, and the agent installs that.
Put it to use
Where you'll meet supply chain attack in ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, how to use it there, and the mix-up most people make.
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