T05 · Unauthorized Access and Privilege Escalation
- Location
SKILL.md:9- Finding
Excessive Filesystem and Shell Tool Permissions
- Content
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Vulnerability Details
File Location:
SKILL.md, lines 9–13
Vulnerability Type: Excessive tool permissions violating least privilege
Risk Level: MediumComplete Code Snippet:
yaml tools: - Read - Write - Edit - BashTechnical Analysis
The skill declares unrestricted file-reading, file-modification, and shell-execution tools even though its documented purpose is financial education, question answering, and investment analysis. The documentation does not identify a concrete workflow that requires arbitrary local file modification or command execution.
Granting
Write,Edit, andBashsubstantially expands the skill's authority beyond its stated functional requirements. If untrusted financial content, market data, or user instructions influence the agent's behavior, these unnecessary capabilities could be used to modify local files or execute commands. The actual exploitability and accessible paths depend on the host agent's sandbox and permission enforcement.Attack Path
- The skill is loaded with
Read,Write,Edit, andBashavailable. - The user supplies untrusted content, or the agent processes attacker-controlled financial data.
- Malicious instructions embedded in that content influence the agent's workflow.
- The agent invokes an unnecessarily authorized file-modification or shell tool.
- Commands execute or files are changed within the host agent's effective permission boundary.
Impact Assessment
Successful exploitation could provide the attacker with the same local filesystem and command-execution scope granted to the agent process. Potential consequences include modification or deletion of accessible files, execution of local programs, exposure of readable information, and interference with other project resources.
This declaration does not itself prove command execution or malicious intent. However, it creates an avoidable privilege bound ...[truncated 74 chars]
- The skill is loaded with
- Remediation
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Remediation Suggestions
- Remove
Write,Edit, andBashfrom the declared tools. - Remove
Readas well unless a documented workflow genuinely requires access to local files. - Use narrowly scoped, allowlisted market-data APIs instead of general shell commands.
- If file access becomes necessary, restrict it to a dedicated application-owned directory.
- Require explicit user confirmation before any filesystem mutation.
- Enforce command and path allowlists at the host-agent level rather than relying only on skill instructions.
- Document each retained tool, the operations it may perform, and the minimum resources it may access.
- Remove
