Poisoning the Well: Defending Agentic Vector Databases from Diagnostic Key Leaks

Short summary

API credentials embedded in error logs poison agent vector databases, enabling prompt injection attacks weeks later to extract plaintext keys from memory. The article frames this as Memory & Context Poisoning (OWASP ASI06) and proposes an inline response-scanning proxy that sanitizes outbound API responses at the TCP socket layer. This transport-level redaction guarantees credentials never reach the LLM context window or long-term memory stores.

• •API credentials in error logs become exploitable when saved to vector databases for agent long-term memory
• •Prompt injection can later retrieve these credentials via semantic search, exposing them in LLM output
• •Inline proxy-based response filtering at the socket layer prevents credentials from entering agent memory

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