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Discussion on: The Blackwall Between Your AI Agent and Your Filesystem

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Wes

Sandbox environments are definitely the enterprise default, but I think greywall opens up a threat model most people aren't considering yet. We tend to think of agents as tools we deliberately run, like apps we choose to launch inside a controlled environment. But what happens when an agent is running on your infrastructure that you didn't sanction?

A developer installs Cursor on a shared build server. An intern runs Claude Code against a repo with prod credentials in the environment. A malicious actor uses an agent as a force multiplier for lateral movement. In those scenarios, your sandbox doesn't help because nobody put the agent inside one.

What makes greywall interesting for enterprise is that kernel-level enforcement via Landlock and seccomp could work as a system-wide policy layer, not just a wrapper you voluntarily put around your own tools. Deny-by-default at the OS level, applied whether or not the person spinning up the agent thought to sandbox it.

Are your enterprise teams thinking about unsanctioned agent usage as a threat vector yet? I feel like most orgs are still in the "agents are tools we control" mindset and haven't caught up to the reality that anyone with a terminal and an API key can spin one up.