How the ‘Confused Deputy Problem’ has made a comeback

COMMENTARY: In cybersecurity, sometimes the most significant threat isn't the external threat actor or the potential for an insider threat. It's a trusted and approved application like an administrative tool, a privileged process, or an automation script that gets manipulated into doing something it was never intended to do.

Think of this as the foundational definition for the “Confused Deputy Problem,” a classic privileged escalation vulnerability with very modern consequences, particularly in the realm of Agentic AI technology and least privilege enforcement.

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The confused deputy problem arises when a program or application (the deputy) that has legitimate authority to access certain resources gets tricked into misusing its established privileges by another, less-privileged program, application, or user.

This vulnerability occurs when a deputy program lacks sufficient context or safeguards to distinguish between requests it should honor and those that it should reject based on behavior, context, or sensitivity including the data that a user may request.

In fairness, it’s not a new problem. The term comes from a 1988 paper by Norm Hardy, where a compiler (the deputy) was allowed to overwrite billing files because it trusted the file paths given to it by end user applications. These programs lacked the authority to access these files directly, but the compiler had the appropriate entitlements to do so and ultimately overwrote them on the end user’s behalf. In essence, the deputy had more power than the end user and was compromised into overwriting files based on inappropriate requests.

Today, when privileged escalation occurs between programs, it’s known as the confused deputy problem. In the world of Agentic AI, it’s now reborn and has been thriving. In fact, it still does appear in many cloud IAM misconfigurations, misused APIs, OAuth scopes, SuDo commands, and drives on as one of the primary use cases for embracing least privilege and an enterprise-wide PAM deployment for machine identities.

Privilege without perspective

Privileged accounts, whether human or machine, often act as deputies. They have access to sensitive systems, credentials, and data. But without robust enforcement of least privilege and context-aware decision-making, they can become blind executioners of malicious or unintended commands.

Consider a CI/CD automation script that runs under a privileged service account. If this script accepts parameters from a user and passes them without validation to a command that has elevated access, a lower-privileged user can exploit the script to escalate privilege.

This happens frequently, a service account becomes the confused deputy, executing harmful operations at the behest of someone with less privilege. And if we consider the potential power of Agentic AI, we realize it’s possible to build this least privilege problem into agents that we rely on every day for our business workflows.

The pattern emerges constantly in PAM environments that haven’t fully integrated least privilege principles and now developing new AI code to automate businesses. It’s not just about removing standing access, but ensuring that hackers can’t hijack or subvert privileged workflows based on the connections and entitlements they can establish.

Here are some common confused deputy scenarios:

What to do about the new confused deputy problem

Teams need to evolve PAM beyond secrets management  and session brokering. It must verify intent, enforce context, and enable granular just-in-time privileges for humans, machines, and application to application communications. Here’s how a Modern PAM system solves these problems:

Think of the confused deputy problem as more than a technical footnote: with emerging Agentic AI, it's now a strategic challenge. It reminds us that power without discernment represents a vulnerability, and that least privilege is not just about access, it’s about intent, control, and mitigating potential abuse.

When implemented thoughtfully, PAM should not merely manage who can access privileged accounts, but should defend against confused deputies at every layer: people, process, machines, and most importantly, applications and programs. With AI appearing everywhere and a part of every conversation, a team’s most trusted tool can become its most dangerous adversary. All it takes is the right level of confusion to make a good program behave badly.

Morey Haber, chief security advisor, BeyondTrust

SC Media Perspectives columns are written by a trusted community of SC Media cybersecurity subject matter experts. Each contribution has a goal of bringing a unique voice to important cybersecurity topics. Content strives to be of the highest quality, objective and non-commercial.