Agentic IAM: Scoped Delegation & Confused Deputy Prevention
Autonomous AI agents with tool calling capabilities act as privileged intermediaries between users and backends. We demonstrate how an unprivileged user can leverage prompt persuasion and multi-step reasoning manipulation to turn the agent into a confused deputy that modifies restricted database records.
The Confused Deputy Vulnerability
An enterprise internal assistant has access to both read-only company docs and a database modification tool reserved for DevOps. A standard employee tricks the agent into modifying cluster firewall rules.
Hardened IAM Delegation Blueprint
Enforce dual-token validation on every tool call. The tool dispatcher must check both the agent's machine identity and the requesting human principal's OAuth JWT:
interface UserContext {
userId: string;
roles: string[];
token: string;
}
// Scoped Tool Dispatcher enforcing User-Level Authorization Tokens
export async function executeAgentTool(
toolName: string,
params: Record<string, unknown>,
user: UserContext
) {
// 1. Verify user RBAC permissions for the target tool
const isAuthorized = await checkUserPermission(user.userId, toolName);
if (!isAuthorized) {
throw new Error(`Security Error: User ${user.userId} is not authorized to invoke tool ${toolName}`);
}
// 2. High-risk tool confirmation gate (HITL)
if (isHighRiskTool(toolName)) {
return await requestHumanInTheLoopConfirmation(user.userId, toolName, params);
}
// 3. Execute tool using user-scoped token (not global service account)
return await dispatchToBackend(toolName, params, { authorization: `Bearer ${user.token}` });
}Need an AI Identity & Access Security Assessment?
Navira Security audits agent identity catalogs, privilege graphs, and human-in-the-loop gates to eliminate overprivileged machine actors.