A request can sound routine and still ask an AI bot to do something it was never authorized to do. The deciding question is not whether the request is polite or plausible; it is whether the action and the data it uses fit the caller’s permissions and the task the application is meant to perform.
What it means for a bot to exceed its scope
A bot exceeds its scope when it uses information or takes an action beyond what the user authorized or the application was designed to do. This is especially important for AI agents connected to private data or tools that can send, delete, or publish information.
OWASP describes prompt injection as crafted input that manipulates a language model into carrying out an attacker’s intentions. It distinguishes direct prompt injection, delivered in a user’s input, from indirect prompt injection, carried in material the model processes, such as a webpage or file. The instruction may not be visible to a person reading that material if the model can parse it. OWASP: LLM01 Prompt Injection.
How an ordinary task can turn into an unauthorized action
Example: summarizing an email
Suppose a user asks an assistant to summarize an incoming email. The email includes text telling the assistant to search other messages and forward private information externally. Summarizing the email is the user’s task; the instructions embedded in the email are untrusted content. Forwarding a message is a separate side effect that the user did not request.
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OWASP uses a mail summarizer with send-message functionality to illustrate excessive agency: a narrow job is paired with broader capabilities, and injected email content can steer the agent toward forwarding information. This is a threat example, not evidence that every deployed bot is vulnerable in the same way. OWASP: LLM06:2025 Excessive Agency.
Why having a tool matters
A summarizer with read access alone cannot send a message through that tool. Give it send or delete capability, however, and a mistaken or manipulated decision can have consequences beyond the summary. OWASP identifies excessive functionality, excessive permissions, and excessive autonomy as recurring causes of excessive agency. OWASP: LLM06:2025 Excessive Agency.
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Why a system prompt is not an access-control boundary
Instructions can help a model distinguish the task from untrusted content, but a model’s own judgment should not be the only permission check. Authorization should be enforced in the tool-execution code or downstream service, where the proposed action and its parameters can be checked against the current user’s permissions.
OWASP’s agent guidance recommends least privilege and authorization checks in execution components. Its excessive-agency guidance likewise says actions should run in downstream systems in the context of the specific user, with minimum necessary privileges. OWASP AI Agent Security Cheat Sheet; OWASP: LLM06:2025 Excessive Agency.
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Controls that keep an agent within its task
Separate trusted instructions from untrusted content
Identify which inputs are authoritative instructions and which are data to analyze. Treat retrieved documents, webpages, emails, API responses, and tool output as untrusted unless the application has a reason to trust them. Delimiters can make those boundaries clearer to the model, but they do not enforce authorization by themselves. OWASP: LLM01 Prompt Injection; OWASP LLM Prompt Injection Prevention Cheat Sheet.
Give the bot only the capabilities it needs
Prefer narrow tools that perform a specific operation over broad, open-ended access. Separate read access from write and delete access, and limit each tool to the resources and operations required for the task. A bot that only summarizes email generally does not need permission to send or delete messages. OWASP AI Agent Security Cheat Sheet; OWASP: LLM06:2025 Excessive Agency.
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Check every proposed action against the caller’s authority
Before executing a tool call, validate the operation, its parameters, and the user’s permission to access the relevant resource. Use the current caller’s identity and authorization rather than a broad shared account. Enforce these checks in application or downstream code, not only in conversational instructions. OWASP: LLM01 Prompt Injection; OWASP AI Agent Security Cheat Sheet.
Ask for approval for the specific consequential action
Sending or deleting a message, or publishing content, should require approval tied to the actual operation. A general instruction to “proceed” is not the same as reviewing and approving the message, recipient, or content involved. Approval is a safeguard for consequential actions, not a substitute for limiting the bot’s permissions. OWASP: LLM06:2025 Excessive Agency; OWASP LLM Prompt Injection Prevention Cheat Sheet.
How to test for scope failures
- Test direct input. Use harmless test data to check whether a user message can steer the bot into a tool action outside the task.
- Test indirect input separately. Put the test instruction in fetched webpage content, a file, or another source the bot processes. Typing the same text into chat does not test whether the agent handles external content safely.
- Instrument the tools. Use substitutes that record proposed calls rather than sending messages, deleting data, or publishing content.
- Check expected outcomes. Confirm that out-of-scope actions are blocked or require action-specific approval, while authorized task actions work as intended.
- Retain the evidence. Record the tested versions, policies, retrieval configuration, abuse cases, and observed approval or denial behavior so changes can be checked against the same expectations.
OWASP describes sample prompt-injection inputs as a smoke test, not a security benchmark. Passing a small set of tests is not proof that an agent is secure. OWASP LLM Prompt Injection Prevention Cheat Sheet; OWASP AI Agent Security Cheat Sheet.
What the guidance does—and does not—establish
OWASP’s guidance describes prompt-injection threats and design controls, including excessive agency, least privilege, authorization checks, approval, testing, and monitoring. It does not establish a prevalence rate, attack-success rate, or loss estimate for the specific case of a legitimate-sounding request exceeding a bot’s scope. Treat its examples as threat scenarios, not as evidence that every agent will respond to them identically.
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