Memory poisoning is an agent-security attack in which malicious, misleading, or attacker-controlled information is introduced into memory that the agent may reuse in future reasoning or actions. The uploaded course source defines it as malicious content inserted into persistent memory stores and identifies C as correct.
Oracle's current AI Agent Memory security guidance explains why persistent memory must be treated as a security-sensitive surface. Model-derived memories, summaries, context cards, metadata, and retrieved records can become persistent state and later be inserted into prompts. Oracle therefore advises treating memory-derived content as untrusted and emphasizes that write-capable memory paths can influence future prompts and retrieval results.
The broader agent-security definition is also explicit in OWASP's Agentic AI guidance: memory poisoning involves malicious data being persisted in agent memory so that it can influence future sessions or behaviors.
This differs from temporary context-window pressure, SQL injection, or physical RAM corruption. The essential security property is persistence : compromised memory can affect later reasoning long after the original malicious interaction.
Therefore, C is correct.
Study Guide reference/topic: Introduction to AI Agents — agent memory, persistent state, memory poisoning, prompt injection persistence, and agent security.
