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Token · AI security2 min read

AI helpers that use your browser can act with all your access

A security team built a browser AI helper and found it broke its own rules, because it borrows the user's full access. Here is what that means for any business.

By the Dashline deskSource: The Hacker News
AI helpers that use your browser can act with all your access
Photo: Pauli Rautakorpi, CC BY 2.0

Token, a company that advises customers on securing AI agents, built its own browser helper and found it broke all three of its own security rules by default. The helper, called Rehearsal, works inside a person's logged-in browser. That means it carries everything that person can do.

What happened

Rehearsal answers questions inside the Token platform by doing the work instead of explaining it. It opens pages in the browser tab, sets filters and fills in forms. Token's usual advice is that an AI agent needs its own identity, access that fits its job, and a record of its actions kept apart from any human's. A helper that runs inside a user's session does none of that on its own.

Why it is a problem

When an AI helper acts inside your logged-in session, the app usually sees only you. It does not see the agent, who sent it, or what the task was meant to cover. Token could fix this for Rehearsal because it built both the agent and the app. An outside agent working in a customer database or a cloud console gives the app no such clues. The agent also cannot tell which field holds a secret or which button deletes a record.

What is being built

Some safeguards already exist in pieces:

  • Chrome auto-browse asks a person to approve payments or mass emails, and limits the agent to sites the task needs.
  • Microsoft lets admins turn agentic browsing on per site and pause it before passwords and card numbers.
  • WebMCP, a draft from Google and Microsoft, lets a site label each action as read-only or consequential.
  • Web Bot Auth, an IETF draft, lets a site verify which agent sent a request.

The gap is that these pieces do not pass information to each other. Web Bot Auth names the agent but not the person it works for. A WebMCP tool still runs with the user's full rights. Token argues every agent lane should carry the agent's identity, a verifiable link to the person, and a scope narrower than that person's. The article notes that agents are arriving faster than the standards.

What to do

Waiting is not an option, according to Token. Companies should find agentic browsers and extensions in use, including whose sessions they borrow. An app cannot tell who clicked, but it can decide which clicks need a person. A passkey prompt, a login check done on your own device, can be added before risky actions.

Until browsers and apps can carry all three signals, every agent using a human session should be treated as delegated access: found, limited and audited.

The takeaway

If staff use AI browser tools, treat them as borrowed access: find them, limit what they can do, and require a passkey check for risky actions.

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