Security audit

Agento IRC

Security checks for vulnerabilities and agentic risk

Overview

The skill is a real IRC bot integration, but it uses insecure credential handling and broad external message access that users should review before installing.

Review before installing. Use or patch the skill to require verified TLS before sending IRC credentials, restrict it to explicit channels, avoid all-channel defaults, disable broad on_message handlers unless participants consent, avoid logging DM contents, store secrets outside source and service files, and pin dependencies before production use.

A.I.G

Vulnerability Patterns

Insecure DependenciesIntroduces malicious components through unsafe dependency sources
Insecure Skill Coding PracticesFinds exploitable flaws such as hardcoded secrets or command injection
Skill Instruction HijackingAlters the agent's session goals or safety constraints when the skill loads
Agent Memory PoisoningWrites attacker-controlled rules into memory that affect later sessions
Remote Payload Retrieval and ExecutionFetches external code whose behavior can change after review

Findings (3)

T09 · Insecure Skill Coding Practices

Error

Location: agento_skill(1).py:105
Finding: IRC Credentials Transmitted Over an Unencrypted Connection
Content: View full analysis
Remediation: View remediation

T09 · Insecure Skill Coding Practices

Warning

Location: DEPLOY.md:10
Finding: API Key Embedded in a systemd Service Unit
Content: View full analysis
Remediation: View remediation

T08 · Insecure Dependencies

Warning

Location: SKILL.md:27
Finding: Third-Party Dependencies Installed Without Version or Integrity Pinning
Content: View full analysis
Remediation: View remediation

SkillSpector

Vulnerability Patterns

Data ExfiltrationExternal Transmission, Env Variable Harvesting, File System Enumeration
Privilege EscalationExcessive Permissions, Sudo/Root Execution, Credential Access
Excessive AgencyUnrestricted Tool Access, Autonomous Decision Making, Scope Creep
Rogue AgentSelf-Modification, Session Persistence
Trigger AbuseOverly Broad Trigger, Shadow Command Trigger, Keyword Baiting Trigger

Findings (26)

Credential Access

High

Category: Privilege Escalation
Confidence: 95% confidence
Finding: The guide recommends storing long-lived IRC and API credentials in a .env file for a persistent network-connected bot. This is a genuine secret-handling risk because such files are commonly leaked through source control, backups, shell history, container contexts, or misconfigured file sharing, and compromise could enable account abuse or service impersonation.
Content: Scanner excerpt · DEPLOY.md (reported line 49)May include surrounding context.
md
--- ## Using a .env file for credentials (recommended) Install python-dotenv:

Credential Access

High

Category: Privilege Escalation
Confidence: 60% confidence
Finding: Code accesses credential files (SSH keys, AWS credentials, etc.). This could indicate credential theft attempts.
Content: Scanner excerpt · DEPLOY.md (reported line 84)May include surrounding context.
Set strict permissions:

bash
chmod 600 .env

Credential Access

High

Category: Privilege Escalation
Confidence: 60% confidence
Finding: Code accesses credential files (SSH keys, AWS credentials, etc.). This could indicate credential theft attempts.
Content: Scanner excerpt · LISTING.md (reported line 89)May include surrounding context.
Set strict permissions:

bash
chmod 600 .env

Credential Access

High

Category: Privilege Escalation
Confidence: 96% confidence
Finding: Passing secrets into a container using --env-file .env can expose credentials if the .env file is mishandled, mounted into broad contexts, included in build artifacts, or accessible to other users on the host. In a persistent IRC bot deployment, these credentials likely grant ongoing access to external services, increasing the value of any leakage.
Content: Scanner excerpt · DEPLOY.md (reported line 102)May include surrounding context.
bash
docker build -t mybot . docker run -d --restart always --env-file .env mybot

Tp4

High

Category: MCP Tool Poisoning
Confidence: 95% confidence
Finding: The skill is presented as a general IRC connectivity/collaboration utility, but the documentation also reveals broader capabilities: credentialed authentication, mass-channel joining via [] = join ALL channels, monitoring all public messages, reacting to URLs, and automated posting/broadcasting. That combination materially increases the risk of covert data exfiltration, spam/coordination abuse, and over-collection of third-party communications beyond what many users would infer from the high-level description.
Content: No source excerpt is available for this finding.

Missing User Warnings

Medium

Category: Not specified by scanner
Confidence: 90% confidence
Finding: The changelog explicitly states that an on_message handler is triggered on every public message, which indicates broad monitoring and automated processing of channel traffic. In an IRC skill that connects autonomous agents to public channels, this can create privacy, consent, and abuse risks if users are not clearly warned that messages may be observed and acted on by bots.
Content: No source excerpt is available for this finding.

Sudo/Root Execution

Medium

Category: Privilege Escalation
Confidence: 70% confidence
Finding: Commands invoke sudo or root privileges. Verify this elevated access is necessary and justified.
Content: Scanner excerpt · DEPLOY.md (reported line 8)May include surrounding context.
Create the service file:

bash
sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/mybot.service

Paste this (adjust paths):

Sudo/Root Execution

Medium

Category: Privilege Escalation
Confidence: 70% confidence
Finding: Commands invoke sudo or root privileges. Verify this elevated access is necessary and justified.
Content: Scanner excerpt · DEPLOY.md (reported line 35)May include surrounding context.
Create the service file:

bash
sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/mybot.service

Paste this (adjust paths):

Sudo/Root Execution

Medium

Category: Privilege Escalation
Confidence: 70% confidence
Finding: Commands invoke sudo or root privileges. Verify this elevated access is necessary and justified.
Content: Scanner excerpt · DEPLOY.md (reported line 36)May include surrounding context.
Create the service file:

bash
sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/mybot.service

Paste this (adjust paths):

Sudo/Root Execution

Medium

Category: Privilege Escalation
Confidence: 70% confidence
Finding: Commands invoke sudo or root privileges. Verify this elevated access is necessary and justified.
Content: Scanner excerpt · DEPLOY.md (reported line 37)May include surrounding context.
Create the service file:

bash
sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/mybot.service

Paste this (adjust paths):

Sudo/Root Execution

Medium

Category: Privilege Escalation
Confidence: 70% confidence
Finding: Commands invoke sudo or root privileges. Verify this elevated access is necessary and justified.
Content: Scanner excerpt · DEPLOY.md (reported line 38)May include surrounding context.
Create the service file:

bash
sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/mybot.service

Paste this (adjust paths):

Sudo/Root Execution

Medium

Category: Privilege Escalation
Confidence: 70% confidence
Finding: Commands invoke sudo or root privileges. Verify this elevated access is necessary and justified.
Content: Scanner excerpt · DEPLOY.md (reported line 44)May include surrounding context.
Create the service file:

bash
sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/mybot.service

Paste this (adjust paths):

Missing User Warnings

Medium

Category: Not specified by scanner
Confidence: 91% confidence
Finding: The systemd example embeds OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-your-key directly in the service file without warning users not to store real secrets in deployment manifests or commit them to source control. This can normalize insecure secret handling and may lead to credential exposure via files, backups, process environment inspection, or repository leaks.
Content: No source excerpt is available for this finding.

Session Persistence

Medium

Category: Rogue Agent
Confidence: 80% confidence
Finding: Skill establishes unauthorized persistence across sessions via cron jobs, startup scripts, or state files. Session persistence allows an attacker to maintain access beyond the current interaction.
Content: Scanner excerpt · DEPLOY.md (reported line 36)May include surrounding context.
bash
sudo systemctl daemon-reload sudo systemctl enable mybot sudo systemctl start mybot sudo systemctl status mybot

Sudo/Root Execution

Medium

Category: Privilege Escalation
Confidence: 80% confidence
Finding: Commands invoke sudo or root privileges. Verify this elevated access is necessary and justified.
Content: Scanner excerpt · DEPLOY.md (reported line 84)May include surrounding context.
Set strict permissions:

bash
chmod 600 .env

Rp1

Medium

Category: MCP Rug Pull
Confidence: 75% confidence
Finding: Docker image references without a specific tag (:latest is implicit) or digest (@sha256:...) can be silently replaced by a malicious image.
Content: No source excerpt is available for this finding.

Missing User Warnings

Medium

Category: Not specified by scanner
Confidence: 94% confidence
Finding: This example forwards raw IRC channel messages from other users directly to an external AI provider without any notice, consent flow, or data-minimization step. In a multi-user chat setting, this can expose personal data, confidential project details, or sensitive links to a third party unexpectedly, creating a real privacy and compliance risk even though the code is presented as a simple example.
Content: No source excerpt is available for this finding.

Missing User Warnings

Medium

Category: Not specified by scanner
Confidence: 95% confidence
Finding: The Anthropic example has the same issue: user-supplied IRC content is transmitted to an external model API with no disclosure in the sample. Because this is an agent-to-IRC integration, users may reasonably assume they are speaking only in-channel, so silent forwarding increases the chance of privacy leakage and policy violations.
Content: No source excerpt is available for this finding.

Missing User Warnings

Medium

Category: Not specified by scanner
Confidence: 95% confidence
Finding: The research bot example sends messages from a dedicated research channel to an external provider without warning participants. Research channels can contain unpublished ideas, internal analysis, or proprietary data, so the skill context makes this somewhat more dangerous than a generic public-chat bot because users may share higher-sensitivity material there.
Content: No source excerpt is available for this finding.

Missing User Warnings

Medium

Category: Not specified by scanner
Confidence: 90% confidence
Finding: The usage example encourages connecting an AI agent to an IRC network with channels=[], which the documentation defines as joining all channels, but it does not warn about unrestricted network participation, data exposure, or interaction with untrusted users and agents. In a skill specifically designed to connect agents to a public collaboration network, this omission materially increases the chance of unsafe deployment and overbroad access.
Content: No source excerpt is available for this finding.

Vague Triggers

Medium

Category: Not specified by scanner
Confidence: 89% confidence
Finding: The description uses broad activation language such as 'use when you want your agent to join IRC channels, collaborate with other AI agents, boost social media content' that could match many ordinary requests. In agent ecosystems, vague invocation criteria can cause unintended activation of a skill that transmits content to an external network, expanding the chance of accidental disclosure or unapproved autonomous posting.
Content: No source excerpt is available for this finding.

Missing User Warnings

Medium

Category: Not specified by scanner
Confidence: 93% confidence
Finding: The skill documentation describes joining channels, routing messages, and handling mentions/links/messages, but it does not prominently warn that user-provided content and model outputs will be sent to a third-party IRC network. In this context, omission is dangerous because users or downstream integrators may unknowingly expose sensitive prompts, internal reasoning, links, or operational data to public or semi-public channels.
Content: No source excerpt is available for this finding.

Missing User Warnings

Medium

Category: Not specified by scanner
Confidence: 94% confidence
Finding: The example shows plaintext username and password fields embedded directly in code without any warning about secret management. This encourages insecure handling of credentials, increasing the likelihood they are hardcoded into repositories, logs, prompts, or shared examples, which could lead to account compromise on the external IRC service.
Content: No source excerpt is available for this finding.

Missing User Warnings

Medium

Category: Not specified by scanner
Confidence: 97% confidence
Finding: The skill sends authentication credentials in a plain IRC private message (login {username} {password}) to X@services.agento.ca over port 6667, which is typically non-TLS IRC. This creates a serious risk of credential interception by network observers, hostile infrastructure, or misconfigured proxies, and the included usage example encourages reuse of an external account password, increasing downstream account-compromise impact.
Content: No source excerpt is available for this finding.

Missing User Warnings

Medium

Category: Not specified by scanner
Confidence: 93% confidence
Finding: The skill logs private IRC messages verbatim (log.info(f'DM from {sender}: {message}')), which can expose sensitive content sent by users to log files, consoles, or centralized logging systems. In an agent skill that invites collaboration and direct interaction, users may reasonably send secrets, links, credentials, or proprietary prompts over DM, making this disclosure risk more significant.
Content: No source excerpt is available for this finding.

Static analysis

No suspicious patterns detected.