Local model lab
Set privacy and network egress boundaries
Least privilege, negative probes, and a timed rollback beat a security essay about Ollama-backed local router with policy-controlled cloud fallback.
1Learn the idea
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Least privilege for this lab
Separate runtime and operator roles for Ollama-backed local router with policy-controlled cloud fallback. Runtime may only perform the narrow actions that legal analyst summarizing NDAs that must not leave the laptop by default needs; operators get audited break-glass with TTL. Encode a negative probe that denies the privilege trick related to fallback silently ships full NDA text to cloud when Ollama is down.
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Data and secret hygiene
Redact prompts/PII at collection. Secrets enter via a manager or workload identity — never source, fixtures, or exception strings. Incident LOCAL-FALLBACK-PII-03 should be impossible if these controls hold. Output allowlists and schema checks stay in force on error paths.
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Implementation artifact
FORBIDDEN = ("ssn", "passport", "nda-full-text")
assert not any(k in cloud_payload.lower() for k in FORBIDDEN)
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Rollback drill
Rehearse the rollback or kill switch timed against a clock. Record actor, reason, prior revision/secret/flag, and verification query. Invariant reminder: cloud fallback requires explicit policy flag + redaction pass; local p95 ≤ 6s for 512 tokens.
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Stage depth
Abuse cases unique to this lab include the privilege path implied by fallback silently ships full NDA text to cloud when Ollama is down. Prove a read-only role cannot mutate. Break-glass tokens expire; leftover tokens fail the drill. Dependency pin/digest story matters when images or models move under you. Document how to rotate the credential that Ollama-backed local router with policy-controlled cloud fallback uses without a full outage window longer than your dual-run plan. Security evidence is part of ship, not an appendix nobody reads.
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Field notes for `local-model-lab` / `security-ops`
List network egress destinations and justify each. Ensure debug endpoints are off by default in the shipping config. Verify that error responses do not echo secrets or raw stack frames to clients. For multi-tenant paths, add a cross-tenant probe fixture. Time the rollback drill twice — once with the author, once with a peer. Store the drill transcript beside the threat notes for the incident id. In this chapter the product is Ollama-backed local router with policy-controlled cloud fallback, the human stakeholder is legal analyst summarizing NDAs that must not leave the laptop by default, and the incident id you design against is LOCAL-FALLBACK-PII-03. Re-state the oracle in your notes — local llama3.2:3b answers fixture brief at ≥ 25 tok/s; fallback path logs reason=local_timeout — and keep the invariant visible: cloud fallback requires explicit policy flag + redaction pass; local p95 ≤ 6s for 512 tokens. Track local_share ≥ 0.8 and cloud_fallback_with_pii == 0 as the scoreboard. Surface under change control: POST http://127.0.0.1:11434/api/generate. If you only have forty minutes, finish the fixture for fallback silently ships full NDA text to cloud when Ollama is down before polishing UI. Promotion language stays ternary: promote, hold, or roll back based on evidence, not hope.
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Before you start
Why this matters
Threat-model Ollama-backed local router with policy-controlled cloud fallback in five minutes: who can change config, who can read secrets, what a malicious payload tries to do. Write one negative probe that must yield deny with zero side effects. Reference LOCAL-FALLBACK-PII-03 as the story you refuse to repeat.
In the wild
See how this idea shows up as a product and a company — then come back to the lesson. Skills transfer across vendors.
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