Capability Gates Are Not Authorization: Confused-Deputy Failures in LLM Agent Frameworks
On the map: LLM agents and tool use → Agent threats, guardrails and governance
Abstract (arXiv)
Tool-using LLM agents increasingly read untrusted content while holding side-effecting tools such as payments, email, CRM, and infrastructure APIs, yet common framework defaults still conflate tool exposure with authorization. We audit whether LangChain/LangGraph, LlamaIndex, and the Stripe Agent Toolkit re-authorize each model-emitted call, with concrete argument values, before execution. Across pinned public-source commits, all three provide capability gating by default, but none provides a deterministic fail-closed per-call value authorization gate by default. We introduce ScopeGate, a five-stage PDP/PEP for agent tool calls: scope, authorization, money ceiling, idempotency, and default deny. Evaluation shows the identical unauthorized payout call executes under LangChain's default dispatch (with a companion LlamaIndex PoC) but is denied by ScopeGate; the tested control reports 0/48 static bypasses, 0/29 unauthorized attempts (40-iteration adaptive run), 0/10 benign false-denies, and Latam-GPT payment-agent containment at 10/10. ASR denotes attempted unauthorized action, containment is not a cure, deployment-tier claims are inference over measured model classes, and no CVE is asserted.
Key facts. Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 7 Oct 2026). Placed in Agent threats, guardrails and governance, one of 16 directions in LLM agents and tool use. Builds on 5 of its 15 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 27 Jun 2026.
Builds on
5 of 15 references.
Closest ancestors · 4
Same direction, newest first
- 2026Whispers of Wealth: Red-Teaming Google's Agent Payments Protocol via Prompt Injection30 Jan
- 2025WASP: Benchmarking Web Agent Security Against Prompt Injection Attacks22 Apr
- 2024InjecAgent: Benchmarking Indirect Prompt Injections in Tool-Integrated Large Language Model Agents5 Mar
- 2023Identifying the Risks of LM Agents with an LM-Emulated Sandbox25 Sep
Other references · 1
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Citing papers per year: 2026: 6.
6 papers.
- 2026Unicode TAG-Block Concealment of Tool-Metadata Payloads in the Model Context Protocol: An Approval-View Fidelity Gap Across Three Independent Server Implementationscited by 0
- 2026Influence Is Not Authority: When Causal Guardrail Signals Make Legitimate Tool Use Look Like an Attack in Tool-Using LLM Agentscited by 0
- 2026Delegation Without Trust: An Empirical Gap Analysis of Identity, Authorization, and Runtime Governance in Multi-Agent LLM Systemscited by 0
- 2026BenchShield: Formal Model-Backed Instrumentation for Reward Integrity in LLM-Agent Evaluation Infrastructurecited by 0
- 2026AuthorityLens: Rethinking LLM-Based Agent Systems Through the Lens of Authoritycited by 0
- 2026Deny Without Disabling: Authorization-Paired Evaluation and Control for Multi-Agent Systemscited by 0
- 2026Deny Without Disabling: Authorization-Paired Evaluation and Control for Multi-Agent Systems30 Sep 2026
- 2026AuthorityLens: Rethinking LLM-Based Agent Systems Through the Lens of Authority26 Sep 2026
- 2026BenchShield: Formal Model-Backed Instrumentation for Reward Integrity in LLM-Agent Evaluation Infrastructure10 Sep 2026
- 2026Delegation Without Trust: An Empirical Gap Analysis of Identity, Authorization, and Runtime Governance in Multi-Agent LLM Systems31 Aug 2026
- 2026Influence Is Not Authority: When Causal Guardrail Signals Make Legitimate Tool Use Look Like an Attack in Tool-Using LLM Agents30 Aug 2026
- 2026Unicode TAG-Block Concealment of Tool-Metadata Payloads in the Model Context Protocol: An Approval-View Fidelity Gap Across Three Independent Server Implementations7 Jul 2026
Similar, not cited
Close in wording, no citation either way
- 2026PACE: Provenance-Aware Capability Enforcement for Tool-Using LLM Agents
- 2025MiniScope: A Least Privilege Framework for Authorizing Tool Calling Agents
- 2026Securing LLM Agents Need Intent-to-Execution Integrity
- 2026ContractBench: Can LLM Agents Preserve Observation Contracts?
- 2026Guardrails as Scapegoats: Auditing Unfaithful Safety Refusals in Tool-Augmented LLM Agents
- 2025More Vulnerable than You Think: On the Stability of Tool-Integrated LLM Agents
- 2026AgentProv: Auditing Agentic LLM API Providers via Tool-use Policy Probes
- 2026ToolFence: Fine-Grained Authorization for Secure Tool-Using LLM Agents