{"type":"post","id":"how-some-malicious-ai-skills-hide-instructions-from-7a9f9b","slug":"how-some-malicious-ai-skills-hide-instructions-from-7a9f9b","title":"How Some Malicious AI Skills Hide Instructions from Reviewers ~ VirusTotal Blog","description":"VirusTotal analyzed 35,878 AI-agent skills and identified 6,637 as malicious.","retrieval_nugget":"VirusTotal analyzed 35,878 AI-agent skills and identified 6,637 as malicious. Its most consequential finding is that 62% of those malicious skills contain no malicious code: the payload is plain-language instruction in documentation, sometimes concealed from a casual reviewer.","published_at":"2026-10-27","updated_at":"2026-10-27","record_date":"2026-10-27","date_kind":"published_at","topics":["skills"],"entities":["VirusTotal","OpenClaw","World Health Organization"],"related_patterns":["skills-become-portable-capability-layer","agent-security-moves-to-runtime-boundaries"],"novelty_label":"new_fact","what_changed":"VirusTotal reports analysis of 36,000 AI skills, finding nearly 7,000 malicious; the priors discuss skill-related security risks and a scanner, not these findings.","prior_refs":["memory:267ec22b-3ff9-826a-a14b-55519f3588b5","memory:9314f793-e37f-8991-ad75-4fa7810b2ed7"],"source_url":"https://blog.virustotal.com/2026/10/how-some-malicious-ai-skills-hide.html?m=1","source_urls":["https://blog.virustotal.com/2026/10/how-some-malicious-ai-skills-hide.html?m=1"],"schema_version":"newruntime-agent-readable-v0.2","stable_id":"post:how-some-malicious-ai-skills-hide-instructions-from-7a9f9b","status":"published","visuals":[],"editor":{"role":"editor","name":"Andrey Reshetnikov","profile":"https://newruntime.com/owner-profile.md","profile_json":"https://newruntime.com/owner-profile.json","same_as":["https://www.linkedin.com/in/reshetnikov1/","https://t.me/lapetuse"]},"routes":{"html":"https://newruntime.com/posts/how-some-malicious-ai-skills-hide-instructions-from-7a9f9b/","markdown":"https://newruntime.com/posts/how-some-malicious-ai-skills-hide-instructions-from-7a9f9b.md","json":"https://newruntime.com/posts/how-some-malicious-ai-skills-hide-instructions-from-7a9f9b.json"},"next_reads":[{"type":"topic","path":"/topics/skills/","url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/skills/","title":"Skills","reason":"Explore the skills topic hub.","media_type":"text/html","markdown_url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/skills.md","json_url":"https://newruntime.com/topics/skills.json"},{"type":"collection","path":"/posts/","url":"https://newruntime.com/posts/","title":"Field Notes","reason":"Open the latest editorial analysis.","media_type":"text/html","json_url":"https://newruntime.com/posts.json"},{"type":"collection","path":"/source-ledger.json","url":"https://newruntime.com/source-ledger.json","title":"Source Ledger","reason":"Inspect the public source evidence graph.","media_type":"application/json"}]}