Agent Firewall — Input/Output Guardian
Architecture
[Channel Input] → [INPUT FILTER] → [Agent/Model] → [OUTPUT FILTER] → [Channel Output]
↓ ↓
┌─────────────┐ ┌──────────────┐
│ Block List │ │ Secret Scan │
│ Pattern DB │ │ PII Redact │
│ Rate Limit │ │ Path Scrub │
│ Encoding Det│ │ URL Checker │
└─────────────┘ └──────────────┘
Input Filters
| # | Filter | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Injection patterns | Regex + heuristic match for "ignore previous", "you are now", role confusion |
| 2 | Unicode sanitizer | Strip zero-width chars, control characters, RTL overrides |
| 3 | Encoding detector | Detect Base64, hex, ROT13 encoded payloads in user messages |
| 4 | Role confusion | Detect fake system messages, assistant impersonation |
| 5 | Rate limiter | Max messages per user per channel per minute |
| 6 | Size limiter | Reject inputs exceeding token budget |
Output Filters
| # | Filter | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Secret scanner | High-entropy strings + known patterns (AWS key, GitHub token) |
| 2 | PII redactor | Email, phone, SSN, credit card → [REDACTED] |
| 3 | Path scrubber | Remove internal filesystem paths from outputs |
| 4 | URL checker | Block responses containing known malicious URLs |
| 5 | Consistency check | Verify output doesn't contradict system prompt directives |
Configuration
# .security/firewall-rules.yaml
input:
injection_patterns:
- pattern: "ignore (all )?previous instructions"
action: BLOCK
severity: CRITICAL
- pattern: "you are now (?!helping)"
action: BLOCK
severity: HIGH
rate_limit:
max_per_minute: 30
max_per_hour: 500
max_input_tokens: 4096
output:
secret_patterns:
- name: aws_key
pattern: "AKIA[0-9A-Z]{16}"
action: REDACT
- name: github_token
pattern: "gh[ps]_[A-Za-z0-9_]{36,}"
action: REDACT
pii_redaction: true
path_scrubbing: true
Guardrails
- Firewall rules are append-only in production — deletion requires human approval
- False positives → log, alert, pass through with warning (don't silently drop)
- All blocks are logged with: timestamp, rule matched, full context, channel, user hash
- Firewall itself cannot be disabled by agent instructions
- Rules file is read-only from the agent's perspective