Security audit

Academic Research Hub

Security checks across malware telemetry and agentic risk

Overview

This is a normal academic paper search and download helper, with disclosed network use and user-directed file saving.

Install in a virtual environment, keep dependencies updated, and direct downloads or exports to a dedicated project folder. Be aware that search queries are sent to external academic services, and that some documented features such as Google Scholar, --citations, --full-text, or --include-references may not work in this script version.

SkillSpector

By NVIDIA

Vulnerability Patterns

Supply ChainUnpinned Dependencies, External Script Fetching, Obfuscated Code
Trigger AbuseOverly Broad Trigger, Shadow Command Trigger, Keyword Baiting Trigger
MCP Least PrivilegeUnderdeclared Capability, Wildcard Permission, Missing Permission Declaration
Prompt InjectionInstruction Override, Hidden Instructions, Exfiltration Commands
Data ExfiltrationExternal Transmission, Env Variable Harvesting, File System Enumeration

Findings (11)

Lp3

Medium

Category: MCP Least Privilege
Confidence: 87% confidence
Finding: The skill documents commands that perform network access to academic APIs and file writes for saved results and downloaded PDFs, but it declares no corresponding permissions. This creates a transparency and policy-enforcement gap: an agent may invoke data-transmitting or file-writing behavior without the platform being able to gate or surface those capabilities appropriately.

Vague Triggers

Medium

Confidence: 84% confidence
Finding: The trigger description is very broad and covers generic research-related requests, making it likely the skill will activate in contexts beyond narrow academic paper retrieval. Overbroad activation increases the chance that user queries and derived content are unnecessarily routed to external services or file-writing workflows when a simpler, non-tool response would suffice.

Unpinned Dependencies

Low

Category: Supply Chain
Content: # Academic Research Hub - Python Dependencies # arXiv search arxiv>=2.0.0 # Semantic Scholar search semanticscholar>=0.8.0
Confidence: 93% confidence
Finding: arxiv>=2.0.0

Unpinned Dependencies

Low

Category: Supply Chain
Content: arxiv>=2.0.0 # Semantic Scholar search semanticscholar>=0.8.0 # PubMed search (via BioPython) biopython>=1.81
Confidence: 93% confidence
Finding: semanticscholar>=0.8.0

Unpinned Dependencies

Low

Category: Supply Chain
Content: semanticscholar>=0.8.0 # PubMed search (via BioPython) biopython>=1.81 # HTTP requests requests>=2.31.0
Confidence: 96% confidence
Finding: biopython>=1.81

Unpinned Dependencies

Low

Category: Supply Chain
Content: biopython>=1.81 # HTTP requests requests>=2.31.0 # Optional: For enhanced parsing beautifulsoup4>=4.12.0
Confidence: 96% confidence
Finding: requests>=2.31.0

Unpinned Dependencies

Low

Category: Supply Chain
Content: requests>=2.31.0 # Optional: For enhanced parsing beautifulsoup4>=4.12.0 lxml>=4.9.0
Confidence: 92% confidence
Finding: beautifulsoup4>=4.12.0

Unpinned Dependencies

Low

Category: Supply Chain
Content: # Optional: For enhanced parsing beautifulsoup4>=4.12.0 lxml>=4.9.0
Confidence: 97% confidence
Finding: lxml>=4.9.0

Known Vulnerable Dependency: biopython==1.81 — 2 advisory(ies): CVE-2025-68463 (Biopython is vulnerable to doctype XML external entity (XXE) injection through B); CVE-2025-68463 (Biopython is vulnerable to doctype XML external entity (XXE) injection through B)

Medium

Category: Supply Chain
Confidence: 95% confidence
Finding: biopython==1.81

Known Vulnerable Dependency: requests==2.31.0 — 5 advisory(ies): CVE-2024-47081 (Requests vulnerable to .netrc credentials leak via malicious URLs); CVE-2024-35195 (Requests `Session` object does not verify requests after making first request wi); CVE-2026-25645 (Requests has Insecure Temp File Reuse in its extract_zipped_paths() utility func) +2 more

Medium

Category: Supply Chain
Confidence: 95% confidence
Finding: requests==2.31.0

Known Vulnerable Dependency: lxml==4.9.0 — 4 advisory(ies): CVE-2026-41066 (lxml: Default configuration of iterparse() and ETCompatXMLParser() allows XXE to); CVE-2022-2309 (lxml NULL Pointer Dereference allows attackers to cause a denial of service); CVE-2022-2309 (NULL Pointer Dereference allows attackers to cause a denial of service (or appli) +1 more

High

Category: Supply Chain
Confidence: 98% confidence
Finding: lxml==4.9.0

VirusTotal

64/64 vendors flagged this skill as clean.

View on VirusTotal

Static analysis

No suspicious patterns detected.