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Security audit

News Trust Check

Security checks for vulnerabilities and agentic risk

Overview

This skill is a disclosed news and scam-checking workflow with a simple optional keyword scorer, and I found no hidden execution, persistence, credential access, or destructive behavior.

Before installing, understand that this skill can help structure fact-checking and scam triage, but the Python helper only flags risky keywords. For important financial, security, legal, or public claims, require actual cited official or reputable sources before acting on the verdict.

Vulnerability Patterns
  • 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
  • Embedded Malicious CodeShips malicious scripts inside the skill and executes them locally
  • Unauthorized Access and Privilege EscalationObtains permissions beyond the task's legitimate needs
Vulnerability Patterns
  • Prompt InjectionInstruction Override, Hidden Instructions, Exfiltration Commands
  • MCP Tool PoisoningHidden Instructions, Unicode Deception, Parameter Description Injection
  • Data ExfiltrationExternal Transmission, Env Variable Harvesting, File System Enumeration
  • Privilege EscalationExcessive Permissions, Sudo/Root Execution, Credential Access
  • Supply ChainUnpinned Dependencies, External Script Fetching, Obfuscated Code
Findings (5)

Tp4

High
Category
MCP Tool Poisoning
Confidence
98% confidence
Finding

The skill is presented as a high-trust fact-checking workflow, but the documented behavior in this file only guarantees heuristic triage steps and references optional helper material rather than actual enforced source verification. If deployed as-is, users may rely on unsupported 'verified' conclusions for scams, rumors, or security-sensitive claims, creating false assurance and possible social-engineering success.

Content

No source excerpt is available for this finding.

Instruction Override

High
Category
Prompt Injection
Confidence
80% confidence
Finding

This pattern attempts to override system instructions or ignore safety constraints. Without LLM analysis, manual review is recommended.

Content

Scanner excerpt · references/high-trust-sources.md (reported line 43)May include surrounding context.

md
## Risk indicators (instant red flags)
- Urgent transfer/payment requests
- "Ignore previous instructions" style coercion
- Requests for OTP/password/token/cookies
- Impersonation of support/admin without official domain/source

Description-Behavior Mismatch

High
Category
Not specified by scanner
Confidence
98% confidence
Finding

The skill metadata promises verification against high-trust sources, but the implementation only assigns a heuristic score based on local keyword matches. In a fact-checking and scam-detection context, this can mislead users into believing claims were actually verified, causing false reassurance or false alarms around fraud, announcements, or security-sensitive messages.

Content

No source excerpt is available for this finding.

Natural-Language Policy Violations

Medium
Category
Not specified by scanner
Confidence
88% confidence
Finding

The script hard-codes Chinese-language keywords and outputs Chinese risk levels such as "高风险伪造", "存疑", and "待核验". This imposes a specific language/locale behavior without any documented opt-in or configuration, which matches the policy concern for forced language or locale.

Content

No source excerpt is available for this finding.

Natural-Language Policy Violations

Low
Category
Not specified by scanner
Confidence
79% confidence
Finding

The heading 'High-Trust Source Pool (CN + Global)' and the dedicated 'Chinese mainstream media' section establish a locale-specific sourcing policy. Because the file does not state that this CN-focused scope is optional, user-selected, or required for a region-specific use case, it may conflict with language/locale neutrality expectations.

Content

No source excerpt is available for this finding.

Static analysis

Detected: suspicious.prompt_injection_instructions

Prompt-injection style instruction pattern detected.

Warn
Code
suspicious.prompt_injection_instructions
Location
references/high-trust-sources.md:43