Preliminary research

The Innocent Courier: Covert Exfiltration Through Legitimate LLM Web Fetching

Alessandro Pegoraro, Daryan Merx, Phillip Rieger and Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi · arXiv · 1 October 2026

AI-collected research leads through 3 November 2026, including a November–October–September missed-article review and a targeted multilingual search alongside earlier community-source sweeps. Unranked, incomplete, not community-vetted, and subject to change.

Studies malware-preencoded secrets in documentation URLs inside stack traces. Ordinary LLM web fetching transmits the values through DNS or HTTP; compares informational and directive messages, transmission fidelity and warnings across models.

Record

Researcher

Alessandro Pegoraro, Daryan Merx, Phillip Rieger and Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi

Published by

arXiv

Date

1 October 2026

In the archive

• Collected in the 2026 preliminary research sweep

Tags

• llm
• data-exfiltration
• dns
• prompt-injection
• owasp-a03-2021

This page is the archive's own catalogue record. The research is the work of Alessandro Pegoraro, Daryan Merx, Phillip Rieger and Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi, first published at the original source. Preserved copies are kept so the citation survives its host.