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OWASP Risks Atlasby Jer Catallo

Issue Details

Excessive Agency

llm08-2024 • Rank #8 in OWASP 2025

Explanation

Excessive agency occurs when LLM systems are granted autonomy beyond their reliability and control maturity, allowing cascading failures across connected systems. Attackers exploit autonomy boundaries to amplify impact from a single prompt or model misclassification. The challenge is governance of action authority, not just model output quality.

Remedy

Define strict autonomy boundaries with risk-tiered controls and mandatory human oversight for critical actions. Limit multi-step autonomous execution and enforce checkpoints at sensitive transitions. Instrument full action traceability and rollback paths to contain failures quickly.

YearRankCategory
2024#8llm08-2024 - Excessive Agency