How to prevent token misuse in LLM integrations

Tue, 22 Jul 2025 19:46:56 +0000

LLMs are powerful. And expensive. Every token counts, and if you’re building something that uses an LLM API (Claude, OpenAI, Gemini or PaLM, Mistral, etc.), malicious users can abuse it to burn through your credits. This is especially true for apps that take user input and feed it to the model.

The trick is that an attacker doesn’t have to hack your servers. Not even SQL-inject it. They just have to convince the LLM to do something it shouldn’t by crafting a proper prompt. So, actually, it does look a bit like an SQL injection, but for AI prompts.

Programming on {IT}

How to prevent token misuse in LLM integrations