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Security audit

Note Processor

Security checks for vulnerabilities and agentic risk

Overview

This skill is a local note summarizer that reads a disclosed research notes file and prints summaries/search results, with no evidence of hidden persistence, network exfiltration, or destructive behavior.

Install only if you are comfortable with terminal output showing contents, tags, previews, and derived keywords from your local research_db.json. Avoid running it in shared logs or terminals if those notes contain sensitive information.

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
  • Rogue AgentSelf-Modification, Session Persistence
  • Trigger AbuseOverly Broad Trigger, Shadow Command Trigger, Keyword Baiting Trigger
  • MCP Tool PoisoningHidden Instructions, Unicode Deception, Parameter Description Injection
  • Prompt InjectionInstruction Override, Hidden Instructions, Exfiltration Commands
  • Data ExfiltrationExternal Transmission, Env Variable Harvesting, File System Enumeration
Findings (7)

Session Persistence

Medium
Category
Rogue Agent
Confidence
60% 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 · SKILL.md (reported line 193)May include surrounding context.

Writing phase

note_processor.py extract experiment conclusion

Now write report based on extracted notes

text

## Key Point Detection

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 · SKILL.md (reported line 365)May include surrounding context.

With task-runner

bash
# Add task to summarize research
task_runner.py add "Summarize experiment results" "documentation"

# When complete

Missing User Warnings

Low
Category
Not specified by scanner
Confidence
85% confidence
Finding

The skill documentation states it works with research_db.json and demonstrates reading stored research notes, but it does not warn users that summaries, keyword extraction, and search may expose sensitive note contents in terminal output. For a note-analysis skill handling accumulated research data, a brief disclosure about potentially sensitive content visibility would be expected.

Content

No source excerpt is available for this finding.

Natural-Language Policy Violations

Low
Category
Not specified by scanner
Confidence
80% confidence
Finding

The limitations section states the stop word list is "English-focused," which implies the skill behavior is tuned to a specific language. The documentation does not present this as an explicit user choice or clearly justified locale-specific constraint, which can conflict with language/locale neutrality expectations.

Content

No source excerpt is available for this finding.

Intent-Code Divergence

Low
Category
Not specified by scanner
Confidence
94% confidence
Finding

The module usage text on L006 advertises extract <topic> <keyword>, which implies extracting data from notes, but the corresponding implementation in search_topic only searches for occurrences of a keyword and prints matching note snippets. This is an intent/documentation mismatch rather than a security-relevant capability expansion.

Content

No source excerpt is available for this finding.

Missing User Warnings

Low
Category
Not specified by scanner
Confidence
82% confidence
Finding

This code accesses a local research database in the user's home directory and later prints note previews, summaries, keywords, and matched content to the terminal. Although reading and displaying notes is part of the tool's purpose, there is no explicit disclosure that potentially sensitive research content from the local workspace will be surfaced in command output.

Content

No source excerpt is available for this finding.

Intent-Code Divergence

Low
Category
Not specified by scanner
Confidence
91% confidence
Finding

The help output labels the extract command as Search within topic, while the command name and module usage text frame it as extraction. This inconsistency creates conflicting intent signals in the skill's own documentation about what the command actually does.

Content

No source excerpt is available for this finding.

Static analysis

No suspicious patterns detected.