LLM06: Add structural authority separation mitigation#801
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…ions Adds mitigation OWASP#9: interpose a deterministic (non-LLM) policy engine between tool selection and tool execution so the proposing entity never authorizes its own actions. Adds reference link to an open-source implementation of this pattern. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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This mitigation captures the right architectural principle. The OS kernel/user-space analogy is precise — in distributed agent systems the same separation failure mode occurs when the agent both decides and executes without a deterministic intermediary. |
Summary
Adds a ninth prevention/mitigation strategy to LLM06: Excessive Agency — structural authority separation between an LLM agent's tool selection and tool execution.
What's added
Mitigation #9: Enforce structural authority separation
The existing eight mitigations are primarily behavioral (minimize extensions, minimize permissions, require user approval, sanitize inputs). This addition addresses the architectural root cause: the entity that proposes an action should never be the same entity that authorizes it.
The mitigation recommends interposing a deterministic (non-LLM) policy engine that evaluates structured intents against deployer-defined rules before tool execution proceeds. This maps to the same principal separation that operating systems enforce between user-space and kernel-space.
Reference link #7: Links to an open-source reference implementation of this pattern.
Why this belongs here
The LLM06 description already identifies the root causes as "excessive functionality, excessive permissions, excessive autonomy." The existing mitigations address functionality and permissions well. This addition directly addresses the autonomy component — the gap between an agent deciding to act and the action being authorized by a separate, deterministic authority.
Changes
2_0_vulns/LLM06_ExcessiveAgency.md— one mitigation strategy, one reference link (5 lines added)