Zero-Trust Agent Mesh NEW
Problem
In multi-agent systems, trust boundaries are often implicit: agents communicate by convention without verifiable identity, and delegation chains are hard to audit. This enables impersonation, privilege confusion, and unverifiable task delegation.
Solution
Apply zero-trust principles to inter-agent communication:
- Agent identities are cryptographically asserted (key pairs per agent).
- Mutual trust handshakes confirm identity before requests are accepted.
- Delegation tokens carry signed scope, TTL, and parent authority.
- Bounded delegation limits chain depth and blast radius.
sequenceDiagram
participant A as Agent A
participant M as Trust Verifier
participant B as Agent B
A->>M: Register key / identity
B->>M: Register key / identity
A->>B: Challenge nonce
B->>A: Signed challenge response
A->>A: Verify response
A->>B: Delegation token (scoped + TTL)
B->>M: Present chain for approval
M->>M: Verify signature + chain depth
How to use it
- Enable trust checks for every inter-agent request, not just sensitive ones.
- Keep delegation scopes narrowly scoped and short-lived.
- Require explicit expiry and refresh for long-running tasks.
- Centralize verifier policy (TTL defaults, trust score decay, blocklist/allowlist).
Trade-offs
- Adds latency and additional components for key management and verification.
- Requires security operations discipline around key rotation and revocation.
- Trust scoring and policy tuning adds governance overhead.
- Existing agent frameworks need adapter glue.