How AgentGateway Uses RFC 8693 Token Exchange to Secure AI Agent Identity

In agentic AI systems, passing a user's broad-scoped identity token across multiple downstream services creates serious security risks, including over-privileged access and potential impersonation. RFC 8693, the OAuth 2.0 Token Exchange standard, addresses this by allowing a gateway to swap the original user token for a fresh, scoped, short-lived credential tailored to each downstream service. AgentGateway, a Rust-based AI proxy from the AI Agent Infrastructure Foundation, implements this pattern via its built-in backendAuth.oauthTokenExchange policy. The setup involves authenticating users through Keycloak, after which AgentGateway handles all token exchanges so upstream services never receive the original credential. The tutorial also covers token caching for performance, delegation with actor claims, and support for additional grant types such as JWT Bearer and Microsoft Entra On-Behalf-Of flows.
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