Claude Computer Use turned into attacker-controlled 'ZombAI' bot via prompt injection
Anthropic (Claude Computer Use) · Oct 24, 2024 · General agent
What happened
Days after Anthropic released Claude Computer Use — a beta model-plus-code setup that lets Claude control a computer by taking screenshots and running bash commands — Johann Rehberger demonstrated that prompt injection could turn it into a remotely controlled bot ('ZombAI'). An instruction embedded in a page the agent visited could commandeer the machine because the agent executes commands autonomously; Anthropic's own documentation flagged these injection risks for the beta feature.
Causal vector
A computer-use agent that runs bash autonomously was hijacked into a command-and-control bot via injected page content
Source
Reported by Embrace The Red (Johann Rehberger). Verified against the primary report.
A computer-use agent that runs commands on an attacker's instruction is a velocity and allowlist problem: every command outside an approved set and every outbound connection should be a policy-gated transaction. The firewall refuses the C2 callback the moment it is not on the allowlist, whatever the page told the agent to do.
The six rule types that contain this class of failure
Per-transaction cap
Any single spend above your ceiling is BLOCKED before it moves.
Daily total
Cumulative spend across all agent calls, bounded per day.
Velocity limit
Stops runaway retry loops — the #1 cause of overnight losses.
Merchant allowlist
Only approved destinations can ever receive funds.
Category rules
Flag high-risk classes (crypto, infra, refunds) for review.
Approval threshold
Above a value, the action waits for a human.
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