AI applications face unique security challenges. Beyond traditional API vulnerabilities, AI APIs expose new attack surfaces: prompt injection, data leakage, and model manipulation. Here's how to secure your AI-powered systems.

The AI Security Landscape

AI APIs introduce attack vectors traditional APIs don't have:

Prompt injection — Malicious input that manipulates AI behavior

Data exfiltration — AI accidentally leaking sensitive context

Token exhaustion — attackers exhausting your quota

Model extraction — Repeated queries to reverse-engineer the model

Context poisoning — Injecting malicious context into conversations

Input Validation and Sanitization

`python

import re

from typing import Optional

class InputSanitizer:

Block common prompt injection patterns

BLOCKED_PATTERNS = [

r'ignore\s+previous\s+instructions',

r'ignore\s+all\s+previous',

r'system\s:\s',

r'you\s+are\s+a\s+different',

r'forget\s+everything',

r'#\s*roleplay',

]

MAX_LENGTH = 10000 # Max 10k characters

MAXTOKENSESTIMATE =…