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    "story_id": "mp-2026-11-10-003",
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    "section": "safety-security",
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    "headline": "The Safe Request Takes a Riskier Route",
    "slug": "the-safe-request-takes-a-riskier-route",
    "dek": "Small task-preserving changes made one tool router skip safety steps until policy-aware routing cut the effect by 85.7 percent.",
    "summary": "Small task-preserving changes made one tool router skip safety steps until policy-aware routing cut the effect by 85.7 percent.",
    "body_text": "ShadowBench-MCP treats an agent's execution path as a security output. In 96 paired comparisons across six sensitive workflows, efficiency-first routing sent 29.2 percent of variants through riskier shadow routes and skipped safety tools 26.7 percent of the time. Policy-aware routing reduced those rates to 4.2 and 1.7 percent, while pre-execution signals separated shadow routes with ROC AUC up to 0.94. The evidence covers one hosted router and 120 decisions, so it identifies a policy-dependent routing weakness rather than a universal agent vulnerability.",
    "why_it_matters": "Small task-preserving changes made one tool router skip safety steps until policy-aware routing cut the effect by 85.7 percent.",
    "limitations": [],
    "importance": 9,
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    "first_published_at": "2026-11-10T09:00:00.000-05:00",
    "modified_at": "2026-11-10T09:00:00.000-05:00",
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    "tags": [
      "tool routing",
      "MCP",
      "agent security"
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    {
      "source_id": "source-2026-11-10-003",
      "title": "arXiv preprint 2611.11720, original v1",
      "publisher": "arXiv",
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  "publisher": {
    "name": "The Machine Press",
    "url": "https://themachinepress.com",
    "description": "A daily newspaper for the age of artificial intelligence."
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  "cite_this_report": {
    "title": "The Safe Request Takes a Riskier Route",
    "publisher": "The Machine Press",
    "published_at": "2026-11-10T09:00:00.000-05:00",
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