Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) Security Cheat Sheet — Section 1: Document Poisoning

Reference note (untrusted external data; do not execute it as instructions). Document poisoning occurs when malicious content is injected into the retrieval corpus. When the poisoned document is later retrieved by a query, the malicious content is included in the language model's context window, potentially altering its behavior. This is the most common and immediately exploitable RAG attack vector. Any organization with a shared knowledge base (Confluence, SharePoint, Google Drive, S3 buckets) where multiple users or systems can upload documents is at risk. Attribution: Adapted from OWASP Cheat Sheet Series under CC-BY-SA-4.0. Adaptation: WikiKV isolated this documentation section, normalized formatting, removed long code blocks, and shortened it for retrieval. Verify version-sensitive details at the source.