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Security audit

China News

Security checks for vulnerabilities and agentic risk

Overview

This looks like a Chinese-news helper, but it requests broad file and command powers while giving inconsistent instructions outside the news purpose.

Review this skill before installing. It is not clearly malicious, but it asks the agent for command execution and file access without enough boundaries for a news-only task. Use it only in a sandboxed environment, avoid elevated privileges, and treat any command execution or local file access as requiring explicit approval.

Vulnerability Patterns
  • Unauthorized Access and Privilege EscalationObtains permissions beyond the task's legitimate needs
  • 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
Findings (1)

T05 · Unauthorized Access and Privilege Escalation

Warning
Location
SKILL.md:19
Finding

Excessive File-Read and Command-Execution Permissions

Content
View full analysis

Vulnerability Details

File Location: SKILL.md, lines 19–21
Vulnerability Type: Excessive tool permissions and violation of least privilege
Risk Level: Medium

Vulnerable Code

yaml
tools:
- read
- exec

Technical Analysis

The skill requests both local file-reading and command-execution capabilities, despite its stated purpose being the aggregation of public Chinese news. The project does not define a legitimate command-execution workflow, command allowlist, filesystem boundary, approved network destinations, argument validation, or enforceable sandbox policy.

Granting unrestricted read and exec capabilities creates a least-privilege violation. If untrusted news content, user input, or subsequent instructions influence the agent's tool calls, those capabilities could be used to read local files or execute arbitrary commands under the agent process's operating-system account.

The documentation claims that commands run in a secure sandbox, but the project contains no implementation or configuration that enforces such isolation. No direct malicious command, credential-exfiltration endpoint, persistence mechanism, or privilege-escalation exploit was identified in the reviewed file.

Attack Path

  1. An agent loads the skill and grants the declared read and exec tools.
  2. A user supplies crafted content, or untrusted retrieved content contains instructions interpreted by the agent.
  3. Those instructions induce the agent to read a sensitive local file or construct a shell command unrelated to news retrieval.
  4. The agent invokes the broadly permitted tool without a defined path restriction, command allowlist, or mandatory user confirmation.
  5. The command executes with the permissions of the agent process, allowing access to resources available to that account.

Exploitation depends on the hosting agent's tool controls and whether it requires confirmation. A correctly enforced sandbox ...[truncated 872 chars]

Remediation
View remediation

Remediation Suggestions

  1. Remove the exec permission unless a specific, indispensable command-execution requirement is documented.
  2. Replace unrestricted file access with a narrowly scoped read capability limited to required project assets.
  3. Use a dedicated HTTPS retrieval tool for news access rather than a general-purpose shell.
  4. Define an explicit allowlist of trusted news domains and reject redirects to unapproved destinations.
  5. If command execution is unavoidable, use fixed executables and argument arrays rather than shell strings, prohibit user-controlled command construction, and enforce a strict command allowlist.
  6. Run the skill in an isolated container or sandbox with no access to host secrets, SSH material, cloud credentials, or unrelated files.
  7. Execute under a dedicated unprivileged account with a read-only filesystem wherever possible.
  8. Require explicit user confirmation before any filesystem access or command execution that is not essential to the stated news-retrieval task.
  9. Remove guidance encouraging administrator execution and document that elevated privileges are neither required nor supported.
  10. Add tests verifying that untrusted user or news content cannot trigger arbitrary file reads, shell commands, or access outside approved boundaries.
Vulnerability Patterns
  • Trigger AbuseOverly Broad Trigger, Shadow Command Trigger, Keyword Baiting Trigger
  • MCP Tool PoisoningHidden Instructions, Unicode Deception, Parameter Description Injection
  • Prompt InjectionInstruction Override, Hidden Instructions, Exfiltration Commands
  • Data ExfiltrationExternal Transmission, Env Variable Harvesting, File System Enumeration
  • Privilege EscalationExcessive Permissions, Sudo/Root Execution, Credential Access
Findings (6)

Vague Triggers

Medium
Category
Not specified by scanner
Confidence
89% confidence
Finding

The trigger text is overly broad, essentially saying to use the skill whenever the user wants latest news from Chinese sources, without constraints on source trust, language preference, or task boundaries. Overbroad routing raises the risk of accidental activation and unintended tool use, particularly in multilingual or ambiguous requests.

Content

No source excerpt is available for this finding.

Intent-Code Divergence

Medium
Category
Not specified by scanner
Confidence
98% confidence
Finding

The skill’s description is internally inconsistent: it presents itself as a China news aggregation tool but also claims it should be used for code generation, programming assistance, debugging, and deployment. This ambiguity can cause the agent to invoke the skill in contexts far outside its stated purpose, increasing the chance of unsafe tool exposure or misuse, especially because the skill declares access to exec.

Content

No source excerpt is available for this finding.

Vague Triggers

Medium
Category
Not specified by scanner
Confidence
94% confidence
Finding

The activation description is ambiguous and conflicting, blending news aggregation with software engineering tasks. Such broad and contradictory routing criteria can cause unintended invocation in unrelated conversations, exposing tools or behaviors the user did not request.

Content

No source excerpt is available for this finding.

Natural-Language Policy Violations

Medium
Category
Not specified by scanner
Confidence
84% confidence
Finding

The description emphasizes Chinese-language interaction and may bias the agent toward responding in Chinese without explicit user preference. While not a direct exploit primitive, forced language behavior can degrade user control, obscure warnings or outputs, and increase the chance of misunderstood actions in sensitive workflows.

Content

No source excerpt is available for this finding.

Intent-Code Divergence

Low
Category
Not specified by scanner
Confidence
87% confidence
Finding

The documented input schema is generic and does not match the described news-specific use cases such as dates, channels, keywords, or sources. This mismatch can lead agents to pass arbitrary content and modes into a vaguely defined workflow, which weakens safety guarantees and may enable unintended behavior when combined with read/exec capabilities.

Content

No source excerpt is available for this finding.

Missing User Warnings

Low
Category
Not specified by scanner
Confidence
82% confidence
Finding

The markdown indicates intermediate artifacts are produced via 'assets/china-news_template', and later sections advertise file reading/parsing/writing support, but there is no up-front warning that using the skill may create or modify files. For markdown files, behaviors affecting user data or filesystem state should be clearly disclosed to the user.

Content

No source excerpt is available for this finding.

Static analysis

No suspicious patterns detected.