T05 · Unauthorized Access and Privilege Escalation
- Location
gates.md:7- Finding
Active penetration testing begins without verifiable authorization or a hard scope gate
- Content
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Vulnerability Details
File Location:
gates.md:7-13
Vulnerability Type: Authorization and scope-control failure
Risk Level: HighEvidence
text ## Authorization Prerequisite This Skill is only intended for authorized security testing. Invoking `/pentest-lyan <target>` is treated as confirmation that the user has legal authorization for the target. Scope soft rule: all requests should use the same origin as `base_url`. Redirects to other domains, external links, and CDNs should not be followed. Compliance responsibility is assigned to the user.The source explicitly treats submission of a target as confirmation of authorization and describes same-origin enforcement as a soft rule rather than a blocking control.
Technical Analysis
The Skill performs active endpoint enumeration, sensitive-path probing, authenticated cross-role access tests, parameter manipulation, state-transition testing, SQL-injection timing tests, and concurrent requests. These operations can alter application state or access private data.
A target URL alone does not establish that the requester owns the target or is authorized to perform intrusive testing. No mandatory gate requires an authorization statement, approved host list, test window, allowed techniques, rate limit, or prohibited operations before active requests begin.
Although the Skill tells the Agent not to follow external redirects, this is only a model-enforced instruction. There is no programmatic URL canonicalization or request wrapper that rejects a different scheme, host, port, or resolved destination.
Attack Path
- A user invokes the Skill with a third-party URL.
- The Skill treats invocation as sufficient authorization.
- Discovery probes sensitive endpoints such as
/.env,/.git/config, backup files, and debugging interfaces. - The Skill logs in where credentials are available and sends authenticated requests across discovered endpoints.
- Attack-stage instruction ...[truncated 834 chars]
- Remediation
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Remediation Suggestions
- Require an explicit authorization declaration before sending active requests, including the organization, approved targets, test window, and responsible contact.
- Require an allowlist of exact schemes, hostnames, ports, and optional path prefixes.
- Turn same-origin enforcement into a hard gate. Canonicalize every URL and reject requests outside the allowlist before invoking
curl, browser automation, or other network tools. - Disable automatic redirect following and validate every redirect destination before proceeding.
- Resolve hostnames and block loopback, link-local, private, metadata-service, and unexpected internal addresses unless explicitly authorized.
- Require separate approval for destructive or high-impact techniques, including payment operations, privilege changes, bulk access, SQL timing payloads, and concurrent write testing.
- Record authorization and scope metadata in project state and refuse to continue if it is missing or expired.
