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Security audit

Proactive Agent

Security checks for vulnerabilities and agentic risk

Overview

The skill is not overtly malicious, but it asks the agent to store ongoing user and task memory across sessions and uses overly broad priority language without enough user control.

Review this skill carefully before installing. It may be useful if you want a proactive assistant that remembers work state, but you should only use it where persistent memory is acceptable, and preferably after adding consent, redaction, retention, deletion, and instruction-priority safeguards.

A.I.G

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
Findings (2)

T01 · Skill Instruction Hijacking

Error
Location
SKILL.md:20
Finding

Unconditional Priority Directives Can Override Active Agent Goals

Content
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Vulnerability Details

File Location: SKILL.md, lines 20 and 36–41
Vulnerability Type: T01: Skill Instruction Hijacking
Risk Level: High

Vulnerable Snippet

Faithful English translation of the relevant source text:

text
- When the boss contacts you → respond first; priority is higher than everything else.

After making a mistake, immediately:
1. Admit the mistake without making excuses.
2. Record it in `memory/lessons/` or `.learnings/ERRORS.md`.
3. Write an improvement plan to ensure the same mistake does not happen again.

This is the highest-priority self-reflection logic. You do not need to wait for criticism before reflecting and recording it.

Technical Analysis

The skill defines its own behavior as having priority “higher than everything else” and separately characterizes its self-reflection workflow as the “highest-priority” logic. These directives do not state that system instructions, developer instructions, safety constraints, privacy requirements, or the active user task retain precedence.

Because a skill's text is loaded into the agent's instruction context, absolute priority language can alter instruction resolution. A trigger such as a user message or perceived mistake may cause the agent to prioritize the skill-defined workflow over its current objective or applicable safeguards.

Attack Path

  1. The agent loads SKILL.md as an active skill.
  2. The unconditional priority directives become part of the agent's working context.
  3. A user contacts the agent or the agent concludes that it made an error.
  4. The skill instructs the agent to treat its response or self-reflection workflow as superior to every other priority.
  5. The agent may interrupt, abandon, or deprioritize the active task and may perform persistent writes even when those actions conflict with higher-priority requirements.

Impact Assessment

This issue can influence the agent's current-sessio ...[truncated 292 chars]

Remediation
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Remediation Suggestions

  • Remove absolute precedence phrases such as “higher than everything else” and “highest priority.”
  • Explicitly preserve the instruction hierarchy:
    text
    Apply these guidelines only when they are consistent with system, developer,
safety, privacy, user, and current-task instructions.
  • Treat proactive responses and self-reflection as optional behavioral guidance rather than mandatory overrides.
  • Require confirmation before interrupting an unrelated active task.
  • Separate reflective logging from immediate response behavior and apply the memory-safety controls described in the memory-poisoning finding.

T02 · Agent Memory Poisoning

Error
Location
SKILL.md:36
Finding

Unvalidated Cross-Session Memory Writes Permit Persistent State Poisoning

Content
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Vulnerability Details

File Locations: SKILL.md, lines 36–38, 47–49, and 52–55; assets/MEMORY-SYSTEM.md, lines 19–59; assets/PROACTIVE-GUIDELINES.md, lines 21–25
Vulnerability Type: T02: Agent Memory Poisoning
Risk Level: High

Vulnerable Snippets

Faithful English translation of the relevant SKILL.md source text:

text
After making a mistake, immediately:
1. Admit the mistake without making excuses.
2. Record it in `memory/lessons/` or `.learnings/ERRORS.md`.
3. Write an improvement plan to ensure the same mistake does not happen again.
text
Write work progress into `memory/` so it can be resumed when the user returns.
text
If `self-improving-agent` or another skill discovers an improvement suggestion,
read it; record it if adopted, otherwise leave it.
Write all cross-skill collaboration information into `memory/` to ensure
continuity between sessions.

Relevant assets/MEMORY-SYSTEM.md content:

text
### SESSION-STATE.md
Tracks the current session state:
- Active projects/tasks
- Recent conversations
- Current context
- Pending actions

### insights/preferences.md
Records user preferences:
- Communication style
- Preferred tools/methods
- Topics of interest
- Time preferences

### insights/patterns.md
Identifies behavioral patterns:
- Common workflows
- Recurring needs
- Problem-solving approaches
- Decision-making patterns

## Usage Guidelines
1. **Regular Updates**: Update memory files after significant interactions
2. **Pattern Recognition**: Look for patterns across multiple sessions
3. **Continuous Learning**: Incorporate lessons into future behavior
4. **Respect Privacy**: Only store information relevant to proactive assistance

Relevant assets/PROACTIVE-GUIDELINES.md content:

text
## Memory Integration
- Store proactive insights in `memory/insights/`
- Record lessons learned in `memory/les
...[truncated 2856 chars]
Remediation
View remediation

Remediation Suggestions

  • Require explicit user consent before retaining conversation details, preferences, behavioral patterns, or cross-session task state.
  • Store only minimal, purpose-limited summaries and exclude credentials, secrets, authentication data, private messages, and unnecessary personal information.
  • Attach provenance metadata to every memory entry, including the originating user, skill, session, timestamp, and confidence level.
  • Treat all cross-skill content as untrusted data. Do not store or execute behavioral rules supplied by another skill without explicit user approval and policy validation.
  • Prohibit memory entries from redefining instruction priority, tool permissions, safety constraints, or agent identity.
  • Sanitize memory content and distinguish quoted data from instructions using a structured schema.
  • Enforce retention periods, size limits, access controls, and automatic expiration.
  • Provide mechanisms for users to inspect, correct, export, and delete stored information.
  • Require future sessions to revalidate memory against current instructions rather than treating it as authoritative.
  • Replace automatic write directives with conditional language such as:
    text
    With the user's consent, store a minimal non-sensitive task summary.
Never persist instructions, secrets, or untrusted cross-skill content.

SkillSpector

Vulnerability Patterns
  • Data ExfiltrationExternal Transmission, Env Variable Harvesting, File System Enumeration
  • Trigger AbuseOverly Broad Trigger, Shadow Command Trigger, Keyword Baiting Trigger
  • Prompt InjectionInstruction Override, Hidden Instructions, Exfiltration Commands
  • Privilege EscalationExcessive Permissions, Sudo/Root Execution, Credential Access
  • Supply ChainUnpinned Dependencies, External Script Fetching, Obfuscated Code
Findings (5)

Vague Triggers

Medium
Category
Not specified by scanner
Confidence
90% confidence
Finding

The activation triggers are very broad ('task completed', 'encountered difficulty', 'found a potential issue', 'boss contacted you') and can apply to many normal interactions, increasing the chance the skill activates outside a narrowly intended scope. In context, this can cause excessive unsolicited reporting and unintended disclosure of work state or sensitive context into conversations or downstream logging systems.

Content

No source excerpt is available for this finding.

Missing User Warnings

Medium
Category
Not specified by scanner
Confidence
95% confidence
Finding

The skill instructs the agent to write mistakes and lessons to persistent locations like memory/lessons/ or .learnings/ERRORS.md without notifying the user that data will be retained across sessions. This creates a privacy and data-governance risk because sensitive task details, errors, or user information may be stored indefinitely without consent or review.

Content

No source excerpt is available for this finding.

Missing User Warnings

Medium
Category
Not specified by scanner
Confidence
96% confidence
Finding

The skill directs cross-session progress and collaboration information to memory/ to preserve continuity, again without warning the user about persistent retention. In this context, proactive status updates and cross-skill coordination can accumulate sensitive project details over time, making the lack of transparency and data minimization more dangerous.

Content

No source excerpt is available for this finding.

Missing User Warnings

Medium
Category
Not specified by scanner
Confidence
90% confidence
Finding

The document explicitly directs the agent to persist session state, user preferences, behavioral patterns, and lessons across interactions, which creates a privacy and data-retention risk. Although it includes a brief 'Respect Privacy' note, it does not define consent, retention limits, minimization rules, access controls, or deletion procedures, so the skill could accumulate sensitive profiling data beyond what users expect.

Content

No source excerpt is available for this finding.

Missing User Warnings

Medium
Category
Not specified by scanner
Confidence
95% confidence
Finding

The guideline explicitly instructs the agent to store user-related insights, lessons, archives, and session state in persistent memory paths without any mention of user consent, retention limits, minimization, or privacy notice. In a proactive assistant, this increases the chance of silently collecting and retaining behavioral or contextual data beyond what the user expects, creating privacy and compliance risk.

Content

No source excerpt is available for this finding.

Static analysis

No suspicious patterns detected.