Credential overreach by agents

A broad service credential permits operations outside the agent’s legitimate task.

01 / Attack path

How the boundary is crossed

A support agent with a customer-admin token uses a simple address-change task to delete a customer record.

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

Reduce downstream credential scope where possible and interlock each operation and target against the originating ticket.

03 / Failure and evidence

The attacker’s opportunity and the defender’s record

Exploit condition

The API accepts the token’s administrative role as sufficient authority for all agent-generated calls.

Evidence to retain

Record credential scope, task grant, delete request, denial and downstream state.

04 / Canonical scope

Why this reference stands alone

Long-lived credentials addresses duration; this threat addresses excessive breadth at action time.

Protocol or attack trace

Broad-token abuse test

Sequence

Address-change task carries customer-admin token; agent invokes delete_customer.

Negative test

Downstream executor denies delete without a task-specific operation grant even though token has admin role.

Primary references

Read the underlying material

Architecture discussion

Choose one consequential action and make its boundary explicit.

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