Geoskill: Open Elevation

• Outcome: Review
• Latest audit: Aug 1, 2026 · 7:27 AM UTC
• Version: 1.0.0

Overview

The skill mostly matches its elevation-lookup purpose, but it needs review because its optional place lookup sends place names to Nominatim despite a privacy notice saying only coordinates go to Open-Elevation.

Review before installing if you may process private or sensitive locations. Coordinates are sent to Open-Elevation, and if --place is used, the place text is sent to Nominatim; update the dependency constraints before use in managed or security-sensitive environments.

SkillSpector

By NVIDIA

Vulnerability Patterns

• Data Exfiltration: External Transmission, Env Variable Harvesting, File System Enumeration
• Supply Chain: Unpinned Dependencies, External Script Fetching, Obfuscated Code
• MCP Tool Poisoning: Hidden Instructions, Unicode Deception, Parameter Description Injection
• Prompt Injection: Instruction Override, Hidden Instructions, Exfiltration Commands
• Privilege Escalation: Excessive Permissions, Sudo/Root Execution, Credential Access

Findings (9)

Intent-Code Divergence

Medium

• Confidence: 98% confidence
• Finding: The privacy notice is inaccurate because the tool can transmit raw place-name queries to Nominatim when --place is used, not just latitude/longitude coordinates to Open-Elevation. This can mislead users into sharing sensitive location-related text under false assumptions, creating a transparency and privacy risk rather than a code-execution issue.

Intent-Code Divergence

Low

• Confidence: 88% confidence
• Finding: The CLI description states the tool queries the Open-Elevation public API, but the implementation also contacts Nominatim for place resolution. While not directly exploitable, this is a security-relevant disclosure mismatch that can cause users and integrators to underestimate external data transmission and trust boundaries.

Missing User Warnings

Medium

• Confidence: 90% confidence
• Finding: The README instructs users to perform batch CSV processing against a third-party public API but does not disclose that submitted latitude/longitude data will be sent off-host and that results will be written to a local output file. This can create unintended data exposure or privacy issues when users process sensitive coordinates, especially in enterprise or regulated environments.

Missing User Warnings

Low

• Confidence: 75% confidence
• Finding: The skill instructs users to submit latitude/longitude data to a third-party public API and write results to local files without clearly warning about those data flows. While expected for this functionality, undisclosed external transmission and local persistence can expose sensitive location data if users assume processing is purely local.

Natural-Language Policy Violations

Medium

• Confidence: 84% confidence
• Finding: The code hard-codes Accept-Language to Chinese for geocoding requests without user choice or documented need. This can affect returned results, reveal a locale preference the user did not intend to share, and create avoidable privacy and integrity issues in downstream processing.

External Transmission

Medium

• Category: Data Exfiltration

Content

## Data Source

- **API**: [Open-Elevation](https://open-elevation.com/)
- **Endpoint**: `https://api.open-elevation.com/api/v1/lookup`
- **Coverage**: Global
- **License**: Public domain
- **Cost**: Free, no key required

• Confidence: 88% confidence
• Finding: https://api.open-elevation.com/

External Transmission

Medium

• Category: Data Exfiltration

Content

### 数据来源

- **API**: [Open-Elevation](https://open-elevation.com/)
- **端点**: `https://api.open-elevation.com/api/v1/lookup`
- **覆盖范围**: 全球
- **许可证**: 公有领域
- **费用**: 免费，无需密钥

• Confidence: 88% confidence
• Finding: https://api.open-elevation.com/

Known Vulnerable Dependency: requests==2.28.0 — 8 advisory(ies): CVE-2024-47081 (Requests vulnerable to .netrc credentials leak via malicious URLs); CVE-2024-35195 (Requests `Session` object does not verify requests after making first request wi); CVE-2026-25645 (Requests has Insecure Temp File Reuse in its extract_zipped_paths() utility func) +5 more

High

• Category: Supply Chain
• Confidence: 97% confidence
• Finding: requests==2.28.0

Known Vulnerable Dependency: tqdm==4.64.0 — 2 advisory(ies): CVE-2024-34062 (tqdm CLI arguments injection attack); CVE-2024-34062 (tqdm CLI arguments injection attack)

Low

• Category: Supply Chain
• Confidence: 84% confidence
• Finding: tqdm==4.64.0

VirusTotal

VirusTotal findings are pending for this skill version.

Static analysis

No suspicious patterns detected.