but how do you check that an email is being sent to #general, agents are very creative at escaping/encoding, they could even paraphrase the email in words

decades ago securesm OSes tracked the provenience of every byte (clean/dirty), to detect leaks, but it's hard if you want your agent to be useful

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ryanrasti an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> decades ago securesm OSes tracked the provenience of every byte (clean/dirty), to detect leaks, but it's hard if you want your agent to be useful

Yeah, you're hitting on the core tradeoff between correctness and usefulness.

The key differences here: 1. We're not tracking at byte-level but at the tool-call/capability level (e.g., read emails) and enforcing at egress (e.g., send emails) 2. Agent can slowly learn approved patterns from user behavior/common exceptions to strict policy. You can be strict at the start and give more autonomy for known-safe flows over time.

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gostsamo 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

you can restrict the email send tool to have to/cc/bcc emails hardcoded in a list and an agent independent channel should be the one to add items to it. basically the same for other tools. You cannot rewire the llm, but you can enumerate and restrict the boundaries it works through.

exfiltrating info through get requests won't be 100% stopped, but will be hampered.

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botusaurus 2 hours ago | parent [-]

parent was talking about a different problem. to use your framing, how you ensure that in the email sent to the proper to/cc/bcc as you said there is no confidential information from another email that shouldnt be sent/forwarded to these to/cc/bcc

	▲	gostsamo an hour ago \| parent [-]
		The restricted list means that it is much harder for someone to social engineer their way in on the receiving end of an exfiltration attack. I'm still rather skeptical of agents, but a pattern where the agent is allowed mostly readonly access, its output is mainly user directed, and the rest of the output is user approved, you cut down the possible approaches for an attack to work. If you want more technical solutions, put a dumber clasifier on the output channel, freeze the operation if it looks suspicious instead of failing it and provoking the agent to try something new. None of this is a silver bullet for a generic solution and that's why I don't have such an agent, but if one is ready to take on the tradeoffs, it is a viable solution.