The Short News

• Outcome: Review
• Latest audit: Sep 16, 2026 · 6:52 AM UTC
• Version: 1.0.0

Overview

This is a markdown-only news API skill with disclosed API-key authentication and billable read-only calls; the only notable caution is an optional user-requested billing balance check.

Before installing, be aware that this skill sends requests to theshort.ai using an API key and successful news/detail calls spend credits. Use it when you want current news grounding, and only ask it to check billing/credit balance if you are comfortable exposing that account metadata to the agent session.

A.I.G

Vulnerability Patterns

• Skill Instruction Hijacking: Alters the agent's session goals or safety constraints when the skill loads
• Agent Memory Poisoning: Writes attacker-controlled rules into memory that affect later sessions
• Remote Payload Retrieval and Execution: Fetches external code whose behavior can change after review
• Embedded Malicious Code: Ships malicious scripts inside the skill and executes them locally
• Unauthorized Access and Privilege Escalation: Obtains permissions beyond the task's legitimate needs

SkillSpector

Vulnerability Patterns

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

Findings (3)

Whitespace Padding

Medium

• Category: Prompt Injection
• Confidence: 70% confidence

Finding

Large whitespace padding was detected (a block of blank lines or a long run of spaces). This can push injected instructions below or to the right of the visible area so a human reviewer never sees them while the agent still reads them. Manual review of the hidden content is recommended.

Content

Scanner excerpt · SKILL.md (reported line 124)May include surrounding context.

md

Query params:

| Param   | Type            | Notes                                                                                                |
|---------|-----------------|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| `topic` | repeated string | Topic key from `/topics`. Repeat to OR.                                                              |
| `tag`   | repeated string | Tag name from `/tags`. Repeat to OR.                                                                 |

Description-Behavior Mismatch

Medium

• Category: Not specified by scanner
• Confidence: 95% confidence

Finding

The documentation instructs the agent to surface billing information via /api/v1/me/billing, which expands the skill from news retrieval into account/admin data access not declared in the manifest. This can lead an agent to access and disclose sensitive account metadata such as remaining credits or billing status without clear user expectation or least-privilege scoping.

Content

No source excerpt is available for this finding.

Natural-Language Policy Violations

Low

• Category: Not specified by scanner
• Confidence: 85% confidence

Finding

The markdown states that the lang parameter defaults to en, which imposes a specific language choice when the user has not requested one. Under the policy, forcing a language or locale without explicit user opt-in can be a natural-language policy violation unless clearly justified.

Content

No source excerpt is available for this finding.

Static analysis

Detected: suspicious.exposed_secret_literal

File appears to expose a hardcoded API secret or token.

Critical

• Code: suspicious.exposed_secret_literal
• Location: SKILL.md:39