Zombie Agents
Akto can detect and alert about Zombie Agents
Zombie Agents are AI agents or agentic components that were once in use but are now outdated, deprecated, or no longer intended to be used — yet remain accessible within the system. These stale agents may be overlooked during regular maintenance but can still expose sensitive data or functionality to attackers.
For example, an older agent endpoint used during a previous product release might still be running (/v1/legacy-agent) even after the product has migrated to newer agents (/v3/). If this endpoint isn't properly decommissioned, it becomes a Zombie Agent.
Why Zombie Agents Are Dangerous
Zombie Agents pose significant security risks because they:
Often lack current security protections and guardrails
Are forgotten in documentation and security audits
Provide attackers with an unmonitored entry point
May have access to sensitive tools or data sources
Bypass modern authentication and authorization controls
Since these agent components are not in active use or visible to developers, they can easily go undetected while remaining exposed to potential attacks.
Detect Zombie Agents
Akto automatically flags outdated and unused agent components by identifying those with little or no traffic over a significant period — marking them as Zombie Agents.
You can monitor and test your agent collections for these stale components using Akto's built-in detection logic under the Zombie Agent tag. This uses behavioral analysis and component activity tracking to highlight potential zombie endpoints.
How to Detect Zombie Agents
Navigate to Agentic Discovery > Collections
Click the Zombie tab from the table,
Review agents with low or no activity over extended periods
Analyze components that haven't been invoked recently
Decommission or secure identified zombie agents
Zombie agents can include:
Deprecated AI agent endpoints
Unused MCP servers or tools
Stale agentic workflows
Legacy agent components with no recent activity
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