Building AgenticEnclave #1: When Authentication Isn't Enough

An authenticated user can cancel someone else's order.

That's the vulnerability I implemented in the first AgenticEnclave scenario, SEC-01, covering Broken Object Level Authorization (BOLA/IDOR).

Here's how it works, why it happens, and what fixes it.

1. The scenario

The lab contains an order cancellation workflow. Each order has an owner, and users should only be able to cancel eligible orders they're authorized to modify.

AgenticEnclave lab context showing the authenticated user and orders with their owner identifiers.

The security boundary is simple: being logged in doesn't give you permission to modify every order.

2. The vulnerability

The vulnerable implementation checks whether the order exists and belongs to the lab environment, but it doesn't verify whether the authenticated user is authorized to cancel that specific order.

VulnerableCancelOrderUseCase, showing the missing authorization check.

The application identifies the requested object, but fails to enforce the user's permission to operate on it.

3. Reproducing the attack

In vulnerable mode, an authenticated user can cancel an order belonging to someone else.

Successful unauthorized cancellation in the controlled lab.

No authentication bypass is needed. The user already has a valid session. The failure is at the object-level authorization boundary.

4. Enforcing authorization

The hardened implementation checks the actor's permission against the order owner before performing the cancellation.

AuthorizationPolicy check inside CancelOrderUseCase, before order.cancel().

If authorization fails, the operation is rejected before the order is modified.

5. Verifying the fix

The hardened mode returns HTTP 403 Forbidden for the unauthorized attempt, and the order remains pending.

Rejected cancellation in hardened mode, with the order still pending.

The tests also cover legitimate cancellation by the owner, unauthorized users, agents without permission, missing orders, and orders that have already shipped.

The engineering lesson: authentication establishes who is making a request. Authorization determines what that actor can do to a specific resource.

That distinction matters even more in AI-enabled applications. An agent can initiate an operation, but the underlying application must still enforce its authorization policy.

This is the kind of work I'm documenting as I build AgenticEnclave: reproducing vulnerabilities, examining root causes, implementing defenses, and verifying the results.

The full technical breakdown is part of the Inside Agentic Security series at cybersecuritypainintelligence.com

How do you enforce object-level authorization in your applications, especially when AI agents can trigger actions?