OWASP for agentic AI, read as an access problem.
The agentic list exists because the older LLM list assumed a model that answers rather than one that acts. Read it from the access side and most of the entries turn out to describe the same thing.
- The list is about agency: tool calls, held credentials and chained steps, not about prompt wording.
- Most entries end at access. Tool misuse, privilege compromise and identity spoofing are all the agent doing what it was allowed to do, for the wrong asker.
- Memory and context are an attack surface. Anything that can write into what the agent reads is an input to a system holding credentials.
- Use it as a checklist, not a threat model. It cannot know which of your agents matters most, because it does not know what yours can reach.
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What it actually requires of agent access.
Narrowed to the part that touches what an agent can reach. The full text covers much more.
The agentic list exists because the older LLM list assumed a model that answers. An agent acts: it calls tools, holds credentials and chains steps, so most entries describe what happens when something steers those actions.
Tool misuse, privilege compromise, cascading failures and identity spoofing all describe the same shape: the agent did something it was allowed to do, for someone who should not have been asking. The mitigation is almost always narrower permissions rather than better filtering.
What an agent read earlier changes what it does next. Anything that can write into that context, a ticket, a repository, a web page, is an input to a system holding credentials.
The list is good for making sure nothing was forgotten. It does not tell you which of your agents matters most, because it does not know what yours can reach. Pair it with a reach assessment.
Questions, answered.
Short answers on owasp for agentic ai.
What is the difference from the OWASP Top 10 for LLMs?
The LLM list assumes a model that produces output a person then acts on. The agentic list assumes the system acts by itself: it calls tools, holds credentials and takes several steps without a human between them. That shifts most of the risk from what the model says to what its identity is allowed to do.
Is the OWASP list enough for an agent security programme?
It is a good completeness check and a poor prioritisation tool. It tells you which categories of failure exist, not which of your agents would cause the most damage. Pair it with an assessment of what each agent can actually reach, which is what the Agent Reach Matrix is for.
How do we start with it?
Take your three agents with the widest access rather than all of them, walk the list against each one, and write down the entries where the honest answer is that nothing stops it today. That short list is more useful than a complete matrix of everything.
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