NHI and Agentic Risk: Third-Party Tools
Every tool an agent invokes runs someone else's code with your credentials. That is the supply-chain problem.
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Every tool an agent invokes runs someone else's code with your credentials. That is the supply-chain problem.
When people use machine credentials, intent is blurred and audit trails break. Agents make that ambiguity harder to contain.
Reused identities and weak environment isolation turn local agent incidents into systemic failures.
Leaked secrets become durable agent context. That is why a credential incident can outlive rotation.
A sanitized regression case where dangerous text crossed an agent boundary, appeared in a customer-facing draft, and became a permanent ASI02 test.
Over-scoped identities turn harmless tools into high-impact actions. The agent is rarely the root problem.
Agent incidents often begin as ordinary non-human identity failures. This opener maps OWASP NHI risks to agentic AI systems and explains why identity controls define the reachable tool surface.