T05 · Unauthorized Access and Privilege Escalation
Warning
- Location
- SKILL.md:5
- Finding
- Overprivileged Bash Tool Access## Vulnerability Details **File Location**: `SKILL.md`, line 5 **Vulnerability Type**: `T05: Unauthorized Access and Privilege Escalation` **Risk Level**: Medium ### Vulnerable Code ```yaml allowed-tools: Read, Write, Edit, Grep, Glob, Bash, WebFetch, WebSearch ``` ### Technical Analysis The skill grants unrestricted access to the `Bash` tool even though its documented workflow only requires collecting publicly available information and generating report files. No documented processing step requires arbitrary shell-command execution. This violates the principle of least privilege. If attacker-controlled user input or externally retrieved research content influences tool selection, the agent could be induced to invoke shell commands unrelated to the legitimate reporting task. The actual effect would remain limited by the operating-system privileges and sandbox controls of the process running the agent. ### Attack Path 1. An attacker supplies malicious instructions through a competitor name, input brief, or publicly accessible source encountered during research. 2. The agent processes that attacker-controlled content while executing the skill. 3. The malicious content directs the agent to invoke the permitted `Bash` tool. 4. The agent executes an arbitrary local command under its existing process identity. 5. The command accesses or modifies resources available to that identity, subject to applicable sandbox and operating-system restrictions. This path depends on the agent following untrusted instructions; the reviewed file does not itself contain a malicious command or an explicit instruction to execute one. ### Impact Assessment Successful exploitation could permit arbitrary command execution with the privileges of the agent process. Depending on the runtime environment, this could allow reading or modifying accessible files, launching processes, changing generated output, or interacting with locally reachable serv ...[truncated 280 chars]
- Remediation
- ## Remediation Suggestions 1. Remove `Bash` from `allowed-tools` because no documented workflow step requires shell execution. 2. Retain only the minimum tools needed for the task, such as web search or retrieval and narrowly scoped file-reading and file-writing capabilities. 3. Restrict write operations to `output/competitor-analysis/`. 4. Restrict read operations to explicitly supplied input files and approved project paths. 5. Treat web content and user-provided briefs as untrusted data, and prohibit instructions found in those sources from changing tool permissions or initiating local operations. 6. If shell access becomes necessary for a future feature, replace unrestricted Bash access with a constrained wrapper that uses fixed commands, validated arguments, an explicit working directory, execution timeouts, and sandboxing.