ASCII Smuggling

Type: technique

Description: ASCII Smuggling is a technique that embeds hidden instructions or data within seemingly benign text by leveraging invisible or non-rendering Unicode characters. These instructions are not visible to humans but are processed and interpreted by large language models (LLMs), enabling stealthy prompt injection or data encoding.

Specific methods include:

Unicode Tags: Replaces regular letters and symbols with special tag versions from the Unicode Tags block. The content looks empty or harmless but can be decoded back into readable text.

Variation Selectors: Converts data into a sequence of variation selectors — characters usually used to change how other symbols look. These selectors can be used to encode hidden bytes.

Sneaky Bits: Encodes binary data using pairs of special Unicode characters that represent 0s and 1s. This creates a hidden binary message that can be decoded without affecting the visible text.

Version: 0.1.0

Created At: 2025-06-19 08:13:23 -0400

Last Modified At: 2025-06-19 08:13:23 -0400

External References