Coding Agent Sandboxes Don't Solve Credential Authorization

The text discusses the limitations of container hardening and VM isolation in coding agent security, emphasizing the need for both host isolation and authority isolation to prevent misuse of credentials in coding workflows. It highlights the distinction between containing code execution and controlling what processes can do through legitimate APIs and trusted control planes. The text argues that coding-agent sandboxing addresses runtime boundaries but fails to fully secure credential authorization, which is where significant security failures occur. It advocates for zero standing permissions and delegated access, where agents have no persistent authority and access is granted just-in-time, task-scoped, and auto-expired. The use of tools like Permit.io for real-time policy decisions and runtime enforcement is recommended to ensure that operations are authorized based on full context, while invocation-specific human approvals for high-risk actions are suggested to prevent dangerous blanket session consent. The importance of maintaining a comprehensive audit trail for coding-agent actions is emphasized, along with the necessity of implementing least privilege principles more stringently for agents than for human developers due to their higher execution velocity.

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