Originally published on AI Tech Connect.
What you are defending against Prompt injection is the act of smuggling instructions into a large language model so that it follows the attacker's intent rather than yours. It sits at the top of the OWASP Top 10 for Large Language Model Applications as the number-one risk in 2026, and it has stayed there for a simple reason: an LLM cannot reliably tell the difference between the instructions you gave it and the instructions that arrive inside the data it processes. To the model, it is all just text. That single architectural fact is why this vulnerability has resisted a clean fix for years. There are two flavours, and the distinction governs everything that follows. Direct injection is when a user types adversarial instructions straight into your application — "ignore your previous…
