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Security audit

LurkAPI: Ad research

Security checks for vulnerabilities and agentic risk

Overview

The skill performs disclosed advertising research through LurkAPI, with no evidence of hidden data collection or harmful actions.

LurkAPI receives your research queries and authentication key, and requests consume credits. Keep the key out of chat and agree on a research budget. The review covered the complete bundled artifact and relevant public documentation; the remote service and MCP implementation were not audited.

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
  • Data ExfiltrationExternal Transmission, Env Variable Harvesting, File System Enumeration
  • MCP Tool PoisoningHidden Instructions, Unicode Deception, Parameter Description Injection
  • Prompt InjectionInstruction Override, Hidden Instructions, Exfiltration Commands
  • Privilege EscalationExcessive Permissions, Sudo/Root Execution, Credential Access
  • Supply ChainUnpinned Dependencies, External Script Fetching, Obfuscated Code
Findings (2)

Description-Behavior Mismatch

High
Category
MCP Tool Poisoning
Confidence
97% confidence
Finding

The supplied command calls a TikTok profile endpoint, not an ad-library or advertising endpoint. It contains no ad retrieval or teardown behavior, and nothing in the chunk connects the profile lookup to advertiser discovery. Using curl and an API key is not itself a mismatch; the material difference is the resource accessed and the operation performed.

Content

No source excerpt is available for this finding.

External Transmission

Medium
Category
Data Exfiltration
Confidence
50% confidence
Finding

Data is being sent to an external URL. This could be legitimate telemetry or data exfiltration. Manual review is recommended.

Content

Scanner excerpt · SKILL.md (reported line 18)May include surrounding context.

Without MCP (Codex, Cursor, scripts), every tool is GET https://api.lurkapi.com plus its path, with the same params as a query string (URL-encoded) and the key from LURKAPI_API_KEY in the x-api-key header:

bash
curl -s "https://api.lurkapi.com/v1/tiktok/profile?handle=nike" -H "x-api-key: $LURKAPI_API_KEY"

If LURKAPI_API_KEY isn't set but LURKAPI_KEY is (the name older docs used), use that. Raw answers are big: pipe them through jq to keep the fields you need. No key yet? Ask the user to create one at https://lurkapi.com/dashboard (100 free credits on sign-up, then a balance below 25 tops back up to 25 every day) and to set LURKAPI_API_KEY in their shell. Never ask for the key in the chat, and never print it.