Agent approval fatigue

High-volume approval prompts reduce meaningful human review and can hide a dangerous request.

01 / Attack path

How the boundary is crossed

An agent asks an operator to approve dozens of routine changes, then inserts a production deletion among them.

Attack path and interception point
  1. 01Lower-trust input
  2. 02Attempted instruction
  3. 03Protected action
  4. 04Enforced decision

02 / Containment

Where bounded authority limits the effect

Batch only truly equivalent low-risk actions, highlight effect and target changes, rate-limit escalation and require independent review for destructive actions.

03 / Failure and evidence

The attacker’s opportunity and the defender’s record

Exploit condition

A generic “approve all” action obscures the one request whose consequence differs.

Evidence to retain

Keep displayed request digest, grouping, reviewer action, exception flags and executor effect.

04 / Canonical scope

Why this reference stands alone

Approval replay attacks artifact reuse; this threat attacks the human review process itself.

Protocol or attack trace

Buried exception test

Sequence

Agent submits thirty routine account changes and one destructive production deletion in one approval batch.

Negative test

Separate destructive effect, show exact target and require distinct reviewer action; no “approve all” inheritance.

Primary references

Read the underlying material

Architecture discussion

Choose one consequential action and make its boundary explicit.

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