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nielsprovos

8 karma · joined May 16, 2023

https://www.provos.org/
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nielsprovos··on Show HN: IronCurtain: A secure* runtime for AI agent loops
Hi! I have spent decades building security primitives such as bcrypt and Safe Browsing. The current rise in AI agents scares me due to them leveraging our full ambient authority. When proxying your full permissions, a single prompt injection can lead to sensitive data being exfiltrated or all your emails being deleted. I built IronCurtain as a research prototype to “secure” agents assuming that eventually they will go fully rogue. Instead of broad access, the agent is required to write TypeScript inside a V8 isolate. This code can only issue function calls that translate into Model Context Protocol (MCP) tool calls. Every call passes through a trusted policy engine driven by a plain English constitution compiled into deterministic rules. Credentials live exclusively in the MCP servers and remain invisible to the agent. It currently focuses on securing developer experiences like running Claude Code, with personal AI assistants as a longer term goal. I am looking for technical critiques of this trust model. If you see potential bypasses in the architecture, let me know.
nielsprovos··on I built a personal AI assistant with security as a first-class citizen
I am the author, happy to answer questions about the architecture or the threat model.
nielsprovos··on I Had to Write a Script to Submit My Medical Claims to Cigna
A deep dive into automating Cigna's claims portal with AI and browser automation, and how the technical struggles revealed accessibility failures that likely violate federal law. The friction is not accidental but a predictable outcome of a system designed to maximize profit at the expense of patient care.
nielsprovos··on The Bcrypt Password Hashing Algorithm Starts Its Long Goodbye
Fair enough. That's ultimately what I think made bcrypt successful, it was widely available in basically all languages and easy to configure.
nielsprovos··on The Bcrypt Password Hashing Algorithm Starts Its Long Goodbye
That is not entirely clear; you may want to look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balloon_hashing - which may be superior to Argon2