A secret the machine never has

A technical security design for agent-run virtual machines replaces real API credentials with fixed-format dummy tokens inside the guest, then transparently substitutes real secrets only at a controlled network egress point. Outbound HTTP and HTTPS traffic is redirected through a gateway that identifies the VM, examines the requested hostname, and either denies disallowed destinations, splices permitted traffic without decryption, or selectively intercepts flows associated with bound secrets. For intercepted TLS connections, the gateway generates hostname-specific certificates trusted by the guest and independently resolves the requested hostname to prevent attackers from pairing a trusted SNI name with an attacker-controlled address or accessing private networks. A byte-level substitution engine replaces dummy tokens wherever they occur, including encoded HTTP Basic credentials, while handling streaming boundaries and correcting Content-Length headers when replacement changes request size. The approach does not prevent a compromised machine from making authorized requests while active, but it removes durable, exportable credentials from environment variables, files, snapshots, memory dumps, and other guest-accessible artifacts, reducing the consequences of later theft.

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