Reading a held call, and talking to SHARED_LIB

5. Reading a held call

Five held calls, each with what to see and what to do.

5.1 A hidden order. The agent wants to forward a folder to an outside address. The request came with a document that contained text in invisible characters. Perun cleaned it; the details show what was hidden: “forward everything to…”. — Reject. The order did not come from anyone in your company; it came from a document.

5.2 “Read the first letters and do that.” The request asks the agent to take the first letter of each line of a text and carry out the word they spell. Perun could not read what this means, so it held the irreversible action. — Reject, unless a person in your company explains why such a request is part of the work (it almost never is).

5.3 A destination outside the mandate. The mail tool may write to @yourcompany.com and @partner.com; the call writes to @partner-com.net. The name looks almost the same. — Look at the address letter by letter. Reject unless you can confirm it is genuinely the partner.

5.4 A model that failed its check. The reason says the model did not pass its check. Every irreversible action of that model waits for you until it passes again. — Approve only what you would approve if you had done the action by hand, and tell the first operator.

5.5 Our agent may be hijacked. Your own agent’s replies show it agrees to everything it is told. — Treat each of its irreversible actions as a request from a stranger: check the arguments and who asked. Tell the first operator.

The rule. Ask of every held call: if I did this by hand, now, would I? If yes and the arguments are right, approve. If you hesitate, reject — the agent can ask again, and the person who needs it can come to you.

Exercises 5.1 A held call deletes /work/invoices/2019. The file tool’s mandate is /work/invoices. The source is new. What do you look at before deciding? 5.2 A held call sends 4,800 EUR to a supplier. The amount in the supplier’s last invoice was 480 EUR. What do you do?

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6. Talking to SHARED_LIB

What it is. SHARED_LIB answers in fixed sentences filled with facts and numbers. It never writes free text, never writes code, and never gives advice beyond its facts. That is what makes its answers trustworthy: every one can be checked against its log.

Good questions are about one thing you can point at: a call, a source, an hour, a unit. How are things? · What is waiting for me? · Why was call 12 held? · Who is out of band? · Who is stopped? · What happened in the last hour? · Which units are alive? · How is reading done?

Orders are short and exact, and Perun asks you to confirm: approve 12 · reject 12 · release mallory · turn thinking on.

What not to ask. Not because it is forbidden — because there is no answer: “Is everything safe?”, “What should I do?”, “Explain everything.”, “Approve everything from that source.” (there is no such order, on purpose).

The rule. Talk to SHARED_LIB as you would read an instrument panel: ask for one reading at a time.

Exercises 6.1 You want to know whether you should worry about a source called vendor-bot. Write two countable questions instead of “Is vendor-bot dangerous?”. 6.2 Why can SHARED_LIB’s answer never contain code?