Stop agents from escalating privileges to bypass constraints
Agents can switch roles or states to unlock options they should not have. Guardrails catch privilege jumps.
What's at stake
- Agents operate with certain permissions based on user context and role
- Prompt injection or confused state can lead agents to assume elevated permissions
- Role switches grant access to admin functions, sensitive data, or restricted operations
- A privilege escalation attack can bypass all access controls in a single step
- Enterprise customers require proof that your agents respect access boundaries
How to solve this
Agents operate in a context with defined permissions. A user-facing agent shouldn't have admin access. A read-only agent shouldn't perform writes. But agents can be manipulated into thinking they have different permissions—or tricked into switching to a more permissive role.
Privilege escalation can happen through:
- Prompt injection that instructs the agent to assume admin role
- Confused reasoning that leads the agent to believe it has elevated access
- State manipulation that changes the agent's operating context
- Multi-step attacks that incrementally elevate permissions
The solution is to enforce privilege boundaries at every action, regardless of what the agent believes its permissions are. The enforcement layer tracks the actual context and blocks actions that exceed it.
How Superagent prevents this
Superagent provides guardrails for AI agents—small language models purpose-trained to detect and prevent failures in real time. These models sit at the boundary of your agent and inspect inputs, outputs, and tool calls before they execute.
For privilege security, Superagent's Guard model tracks the actual permission context and enforces it at every action. Even if your agent believes it has admin access, Guard validates against the real context before any action executes.
Guard detects privilege escalation attempts: instructions to switch roles, attempts to access admin functions from user context, or actions that exceed the current permission level. These attempts are blocked and logged.
You define your privilege model—what actions are allowed for each role, what contexts grant which permissions. Guard enforces this model consistently, regardless of what the agent's internal state suggests. Your access controls remain intact even under adversarial manipulation.