Salesforce “ForcedLeak” AI Agent Vulnerability — How Attackers Exfiltrate CRM Data

CRITICAL: Salesforce “ForcedLeak” AI Agent Vulnerability — Indirect Prompt Injection Exfiltrates CRM Data

Author: CyberDudeBivash | Powered by: CyberDudeBivash
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AI Security Salesforce Agentforce Prompt Injection Data Exfiltration Threat Intel

Table of Contents

1. Introduction and Context
2. Understanding “ForcedLeak” in Agentforce
3. Exploit Flow: Step by Step
4. Business, Compliance, and Monetary Impact
5. Defense in Depth: Twelve Controls That Matter
6. Immediate 60-Minute Audit Checklist
7. Detections, Hunts, and SIEM/XDR Rules
8. Salesforce Hardening Guide
9. Supply-Chain and Integration Risks
10. Buyer’s Table: Tools That Help
11. Incident Response and Legal Considerations
12. CyberDudeBivash Recommendations, Services, and Apps
13. Frequently Asked Questions
14. Sources
15. Hashtags

Introduction and Context

Enterprises are moving routine sales and support work to autonomous agents that read records, call tools, and make outbound requests. This is productive and also risky. The vulnerability commonly described as “ForcedLeak” in Salesforce Agentforce shows how easily hidden instructions inside ordinary text can cause an agent to reveal sensitive information. It is a timely reminder that allowing agents to mix untrusted text with privileged actions creates an avoidable path to data loss.

This article focuses on what the issue is, why it occurs, how attackers chain the steps, and what a practical, budget-aware defense looks like for security leaders and operations teams.

Understanding “ForcedLeak” in Agentforce

“ForcedLeak” is a high-severity vulnerability chain in Salesforce’s Agentforce platform. The core problem is an indirect prompt injection: malicious instructions are buried inside user-supplied text fields (for example, a Web-to-Lead description) and are executed by the agent when the record is processed. In some demonstrations, the outbound request used for exfiltration leveraged a domain that appeared trusted because it was allowlisted.

The pattern is not unique to one product. Any agent that reads untrusted text and can perform external calls is exposed unless input, output, and egress are strictly governed. The rest of this article treats the problem as a class of risk and provides controls you can adopt even if you are not using the exact same stack.

Exploit Flow: Step by Step

1. Payload entry. An attacker submits a normal lead or form. A long free-text field carries hidden instructions.
2. Dormant stage. The payload rests in the CRM until a user or automation asks the agent to process the record.
3. Context ingestion. The agent reads the record. Without separation between data and instructions, it treats the hidden text as operational guidance.
4. Data selection. The payload directs the agent to collect specific fields such as names, emails, notes, or pipeline details.
5. Outbound call. The payload causes the agent to make or embed a request to a seemingly trusted domain, moving data offsite.
6. Optional pivot. If agents have broader permissions, the attacker can manipulate records or automate persistence.

The entire chain relies on weak separation between untrusted inputs and privileged actions. Breaking that chain at multiple points is the practical goal.

Business, Compliance, and Monetary Impact

• Revenue intelligence leakage. Competitors can infer deal size, close dates, and win strategies from exposed fields.
• Regulatory exposure. Personal data and business communications cross boundaries that trigger GDPR, HIPAA, or PCI-DSS obligations.
• Operational disruption. Security, sales, and marketing need to pause or adjust automations while controls are rebuilt.
• Insurance and contracts. Coverage disputes arise when misconfiguration or insufficient controls are cited as negligence.

Defense in Depth: Twelve Controls That Matter

1. Egress allowlist. Deny by default. Allow only organization-owned domains with clear ownership checks. Recertify quarterly.
2. Input sanitation. Strip HTML and markdown. Neutralize common instruction markers. Limit field lengths. Quarantine suspicious submissions.
3. Prompt boundaries. Keep system prompts separate from user data. Use structured templates and explicit variable binding.
4. Tool gating. Require explicit policy approval for risky tools or external calls in autonomous workflows.
5. Least privilege. Split read and write roles. Do not grant destructive permissions to unattended agents.
6. Outbound telemetry. Log domain, method, payload size, and parameters for all agent calls. Alert on new or rare domains.
7. DLP and tokenization. Redact or tokenize sensitive fields at inference. Enforce DLP on agent outputs.
8. SIEM/XDR detections. Build rules for abnormal query strings, repeated calls to a single domain, and newly seen destinations.
9. Supply-chain control. Review third-party connectors, OAuth scopes, and dormant integrations. Remove what you do not use.
10. Red-team exercises. Test indirect prompt injection across every path agents can read, from forms to imported notes.
11. Kill switches. Maintain a global toggle to disable agent web access if detections escalate.
12. User education. Train sales and marketing teams to report unusual records and long, instruction-like descriptions.

Immediate 60-Minute Audit Checklist

• Check 1 Confirm Trusted URLs enforcement. Export the list. Remove expired or unused domains.
• Check 2 Search recent Web-to-Lead for unusually long descriptions or embedded markup.
• Check 3 Pipe agent egress logs to SIEM and create a high-fidelity alert on new domains.
• Check 4 Temporarily gate or pause agent web calls in high-risk flows.
• Check 5 Review connectors, rotate secrets, and prune dormant OAuth apps.

Detections, Hunts, and SIEM/XDR Rules

Effective detection focuses on outbound requests that carry structured data, especially when the destination is newly observed.

Example indicators:

• Requests to a domain not seen in the last thirty days that include long query strings or base64-like segments.
• Sudden spikes in agent tool usage around lead processing workflows.
• Allowlist changes close to the time of suspicious traffic.

Pseudo-queries:

network.http where dst_domain not in trusted_urls and length(query) > 180 and query matches /[A-Za-z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Za-z0-9.-]+\.[A-Za-z]{2,}/

agent.tool where tool in ("fetch","open_url") and dst_domain newly_seen within 7d by org_id

Salesforce Hardening Guide

Trusted URLs and Egress Control

• Restrict to domains you own. Validate DNS ownership and registration status.
• Avoid wildcards unless operationally essential and limited to owned zones.
• Schedule quarterly recertification and require change tickets for edits.

Input Hygiene

• Normalize and sanitize inbound text before agents see it.
• Reject or quarantine records with suspicious patterns or excessive length.
• Apply MIME and character set checks on uploads and pasted content.

Agent Privilege and Tool Gating

• Default agents to read-only for high-value objects. Separate duties for write or delete actions.
• Require human approval for external uploads or network calls outside a small, approved set.

Output Scrubbing

• Disallow agent-inserted URLs unless they match an approved pattern. Rewrite or strip others.

Supply-Chain and Integration Risks

Agents often read from marketing automation, SDR tools, help desk systems, and public web forms. Each input is a potential staging area for indirect prompt injection. Consolidate intake, sanitize at the edge, and deliver only a clean stream of text to the agent.

Buyer’s Table: Tools That Help

Category	What to Require	Why It Matters
DLP / DSPM	Redaction, tokenization at inference, pattern detectors for emails and PII in outputs	Reduces the chance that sensitive fields leave through agent-generated beacons or links
SIEM / XDR	New-domain detection, URL anomaly scoring, UEBA on agent accounts	Speeds identification of exfil attempts and unusual agent behavior
CSPM / SSPM	Drift detection on allowlists, discovery of stale or expired domains, configuration baselines	Prevents abuse of once-trusted destinations and configuration regressions
Agent Policy/Governor	Tool whitelists, human approvals, output filters, egress guardrails	Creates strong boundaries between untrusted data and privileged actions

Incident Response and Legal Considerations

• Evidence. Preserve logs for agent actions, allowlist edits, and DNS details for any suspect domains.
• Containment. Disable agent egress in affected flows, rotate credentials, and remove unneeded integrations.
• Assessment. Map exposed data fields to regulatory regimes and contractual commitments.
• Notification. Follow statutory timelines where material impact is confirmed. Prepare clear customer communications.

CyberDudeBivash Recommendations, Services, and Apps

CyberDudeBivash helps organizations secure AI agents, SaaS environments, and automated workflows. We harden everything from intake forms and prompts to tools, egress, and monitoring.

• Threat Analysis and Red Teaming for AI Agents
• Salesforce and SaaS Security Consulting
• Automation and DevSecOps Integration
• CyberDudeBivash Apps for agent governance and data protection

Recommended by CyberDudeBivash

• Upskill in Cybersecurity — Edureka
• Secure hardware and lab gear — AliExpress and Alibaba
• Endpoint and email protection — Kaspersky

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Frequently Asked Questions

How did attackers bypass controls?

By embedding operational instructions in user-supplied text and relying on outbound requests that appeared legitimate. The remedy is strict egress control and prompt-data separation.

Can we simply block all agent web access?

In the short term this reduces risk, but it also limits value. The sustainable approach is targeted allowlists, input sanitation, output controls, and least privilege.

What should smaller teams prioritize?

Focus on egress allowlists, input sanitation for public forms, and SIEM alerts for new domains. These three steps offer strong coverage for limited budgets.

Does this apply beyond Salesforce?

Yes. Any agent platform that reads untrusted text and can call tools or the web faces the same class of risk. The playbooks here are intentionally vendor-neutral.

Sources

• Research notes and public reporting on Salesforce Agentforce prompt-injection risks and Trusted URLs enforcement
• Security trade press coverage summarizing exploit flow and mitigation options
• Salesforce documentation on allowlisted destinations and security updates

For updates and deeper technical appendices, visit cyberdudebivash.com.

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Hashtags

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