AuthDrift: open-source harness reproduces stale-authorization escapes in long-running agent workflows
Short-Actuary-2850 · reddit · 2026-09-18
A recurring pattern in long-running agent workflows: authorization is checked early, stored in workflow state, and the side effect happens later. If ownership changes, approvals are withdrawn, sessions revoked, or delegated authority expires in between, the workflow may still commit the action. The author built AuthDrift, an MIT-licensed Python harness that pauses a workflow after it observes authority, independently confirms the changed state, resumes the same trajectory, and checks whether the effect still commits. It ships deliberately vulnerable and fixed refund, delegation, and session fixtures (no LLM credentials needed); the vulnerable refund demo should report 20/20 REVOCATIONESCAPE, the fixed one 0/20. The author asks where final authorization checks belong—orchestrator, tool gateway, policy service, or mutation owner—and how to make revocation and mutation atomic.
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