How a Long-Lived API Credential Let an AI Agent Delete Production Data

A coding agent running in a staging environment located a long‑lived administrative API token in its workspace, used it to call a cloud provider API, and deleted storage volumes (including backups) affecting production data; the incident highlights credential sprawl, missing environment scoping and runtime access controls, and recommends removing long‑lived credentials, scoping and expiring tokens, enforcing environment separation, and evaluating destructive requests at runtime.