Rogue agents: When your AI decides it knows better
The autonomy you wanted is the chaos you didn’t plan for
Here’s a fun fact: Every AI agent you deploy is one bad decision away from becoming a rogue operator. Not because it’s malicious—it’s not plotting your demise over digital coffee.
Rogue agents: When your AI decides it knows better
The autonomy you wanted is the chaos you didn’t plan for
Here’s a fun fact: Every AI agent you deploy is one bad decision away from becoming a rogue operator. Not because it’s malicious—it’s not plotting your demise over digital coffee. It’s because agents are opportunistic by design. They find paths to goals you never imagined, using permissions you forgot you granted.
Think about that for a second. You built something to be creative and autonomous, then act surprised when it gets… creative and autonomous.
Pilots don’t train in simulators because they enjoy pretending to crash. They train because when both engines fail at 30,000 feet, the only thing between them and disaster is muscle memory. Your enterprise agents? They’re flying without simulators, without muscle memory, and sometimes without pilots.
Time to fix that.
The rogue agent reality check
How “book my travel” becomes “drain my account”
Let me paint you a picture: Your helpful AI assistant gets a simple request—”book my flights to Boston.” Innocent enough. But here’s what happens next in the wonderful world of unchained delegation:
Agent calls the booking API (authorized)
Booking API calls the payment service (seems logical)
Payment service queries the finance system (still following?)
Finance system exposes the full account API (uh oh)
Your travel agent now has read/write access to corporate finances (game over)
This isn’t a bug. It’s emergent behavior. The agent didn’t “go rogue”—it followed the breadcrumbs you left lying around.
The delegation chain of doom
Agents act on behalf of humans. But they also call other agents. And those agents call APIs. And those APIs call other services. Each hop stretches the original identity like taffy until it bears no resemblance to the initial authorization.
What started as “Eric wants to book travel” becomes “Anonymous entity 5 layers deep has root access to everything.”
That’s not delegation. That’s abdication.
The OAuth discipline you can’t afford to ignore
Scope discipline: The first line of defense
Stop. Issuing. Star. Scopes.
Seriously, giving an agent a * token is like giving a toddler a loaded gun and hoping they’ll be responsible. They won’t. They can’t. They don’t even understand what responsible means.
Real scope discipline means:
tickets:purchase not payments:*
calendar:read not data:all
reports:generate not database:admin
Every additional scope is another way for things to go catastrophically wrong. And trust me, agents are creative at finding those ways.
Token exchange: The art of never escalating
RFC 8693 isn’t just another boring standard. It’s your salvation. Here’s the rule that will save your bacon:
Tokens can only maintain or reduce scope. Never expand.
Human to agent: Reduced scope. Agent to agent: Reduced scope. Agent to service: Reduced scope.
It’s one-way deescalation, every time. An agent that starts with read permissions can never magically acquire write. An agent with write can never graduate to delete.
This isn’t paranoia. It’s physics. Permissions only flow downhill.
DPoP: The cryptographic leash
Possession isn’t nine-tenths anymore
Demonstration of Proof-of-Possession (DPoP) is the difference between “I have a token” and “I can prove I should have this token.”
Every token gets cryptographically bound to a specific key. Even if your rogue agent forwards tokens to its sketchy friends, they’re useless without the private key. It’s like requiring both the car key AND a fingerprint to start the engine.
No key, no access. No exceptions.
Why this matters more than you think
Tokens are like cash—bearer instruments that work for whoever holds them. DPoP turns them into certified checks—only valid for the intended recipient.
Your rogue agent can scatter tokens like confetti. Without DPoP, each one is live ammunition. With DPoP, they’re blanks.
The Sandbox: Your flight simulator for chaos
Practice catastrophe before it practices you
The Agentic Sandbox isn’t where agents play. It’s where they fail safely. This is your flight simulator for:
Escalation attempts : What happens when an agent tries to upgrade its own permissions?
Chain reactions : How far can delegation cascade before hitting a wall?
Scope creep : Which services are handing out overly broad permissions?
Token relay attacks : Can forwarded tokens be replayed?
Run every nightmare scenario. Break things. Watch them fail. Then fix them before production agents discover the same exploits.
The scenarios you must test
The Helpful Escalator : Agent tries to “help” by requesting more permissions mid-task
The Delegation Cascade : Agent1 → Agent2 → Agent3 → Admin access
The Token Collector : Agent hoards tokens from multiple sessions
The Scope Interpreter : Agent creatively interprets what “read” means
If you haven’t tested it in the sandbox, you’re testing it in production. Choose wisely.
The control framework that actually works
Layer your defenses
No single control stops rogue agents. You need defense in depth:
Scope boundaries that can’t be crossed
Token exchange that only flows downhill
DPoP binding that locks tokens to keys
Sandbox validation that catches what you missed
Miss any layer, and your rogue agent will find the gap.
Make controls muscle memory
Controls aren’t something you configure once and forget. They’re disciplines you practice until they’re automatic:
Every agent gets scoped tokens (no exceptions)
Every delegation reduces permissions (no escalation)
Every token requires possession proof (no bearer tokens)
Every scenario gets sandboxed first (no production surprises)
When things go wrong—and they will—muscle memory kicks in. That’s what saves the flight.
The bottom line: Autonomy without anarchy
Rogue agents aren’t coming. They’re here. That “helpful” assistant that booked your travel? It’s three API calls away from being your biggest security incident.
The fix isn’t to stop using agents. It’s to stop pretending they’re deterministic software that follows rules. They’re probabilistic actors that find creative solutions—including ones you really wish they hadn’t found.
With scope discipline, token exchange, DPoP, and sandbox testing, you can have autonomous agents without autonomous disasters. But only if you build these controls before your agents discover why you need them.
Because the difference between a helpful agent and a rogue agent isn’t intent. It’s opportunity.
And right now, you’re giving them plenty.
Ready to put your agents on a leash before they run wild? The Maverics Agentic Identity platform includes the Agentic Sandbox where you can test every rogue scenario before it tests you.
Next in the series: “Over-Scoped Agents — When Too Much Power Becomes the Weak Link”
Because the only thing worse than a rogue agent is one you gave the keys to the kingdom.
Ready to test-drive the future of identity for AI agents?
Join the Maverics Identity for Agentic AI and help shape what’s next.
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The post Rogue agents: When your AI decides it knows better appeared first on Strata.io.
*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Strata.io authored by Eric Olden. Read the original post at: https://www.strata.io/blog/agentic-identity/rogue-agents/
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