Security audit

Alibabacloud Network Connect With Ipsec Vpn

Security checks across malware telemetry and agentic risk

Overview

This VPN setup skill appears purpose-aligned, but it needs Review because it combines paid cloud changes and root networking changes with under-scoped secret-handling and credential guidance.

Install only if you intend to let an agent guide Alibaba Cloud VPN creation and root-level Linux network changes. Use a dedicated least-privilege RAM identity or short-lived role, verify every region, VPC, subnet, billing, route, firewall, and deletion command before running it, keep SSH host key verification enabled, generate your own PSK, and avoid displaying or sharing credential-bearing command output or backup archives.

SkillSpector

By NVIDIA

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 (8)

Description-Behavior Mismatch

High

Confidence: 99% confidence
Finding: The quickstart embeds concrete VPN gateway IPs, a server public IP, and a pre-shared key directly in documentation. Publishing live-looking credentials in a setup guide can lead users to deploy reused secrets, expose third-party infrastructure details, or accidentally connect to the wrong environment, which is especially dangerous in a VPN skill where the material directly governs trusted network access.

Intent-Code Divergence

Medium

Confidence: 95% confidence
Finding: The guide tells users to replace placeholder values, but the document actually provides concrete values, creating a misleading and unsafe workflow. In a VPN configuration context, this mismatch increases the likelihood that operators will copy-paste sensitive or environment-specific values unchanged, causing credential reuse, misrouting, or unauthorized tunnel establishment.

Missing User Warnings

Medium

Confidence: 94% confidence
Finding: The guide shows non-interactive commands with access key ID and secret directly on the command line and in a plaintext config example. In real use, this can expose credentials via shell history, process listings, terminal logs, screenshots, and persistent storage in ~/.aliyun/config.json, which is especially risky for an agent skill likely to be copied into automation.

Missing User Warnings

Medium

Confidence: 92% confidence
Finding: The document recommends non-interactive credential configuration for scripts, CI/CD, and agent-driven automation without warning that automation systems often persist command arguments, logs, job definitions, and environment data. In this skill context, that omission is more dangerous because users may operationalize the examples directly in pipelines or autonomous workflows, causing secret leakage at scale.

Missing User Warnings

Medium

Confidence: 88% confidence
Finding: The instructions append to /etc/sysctl.conf and open firewall ports/protocols system-wide without warning about persistence, rollback, or possible exposure of the host. In a network-connectivity skill, these changes are expected operationally, but omitting cautions can still lead to unintended network exposure or break existing policy controls.

Missing User Warnings

Medium

Confidence: 93% confidence
Finding: The backup instructions archive swanctl and StrongSwan configuration files that may contain PSKs and other sensitive network information, but they do not warn that the resulting archive is itself sensitive. If the tarball is stored, transferred, or shared insecurely, an attacker could recover VPN secrets and gain trusted network access.

Missing User Warnings

Medium

Confidence: 94% confidence
Finding: The troubleshooting guide tells users to print or inspect the `secrets` section of `swanctl.conf`, which may reveal the pre-shared key directly in terminal output, logs, scrollback, or shared support sessions. In a VPN troubleshooting context this is operationally plausible, but it still exposes highly sensitive credentials without any masking guidance or safer verification method.

Missing User Warnings

Medium

Confidence: 95% confidence
Finding: The documentation instructs users to run `sudo swanctl --list-creds`, which can enumerate loaded credentials and secret material or metadata about them. In a verification guide, this creates unnecessary risk of exposing sensitive VPN authentication details in terminal output, logs, screenshots, or shared support artifacts.

VirusTotal

65/65 vendors flagged this skill as clean.

View on VirusTotal

Static analysis

No suspicious patterns detected.