T05 · Unauthorized Access and Privilege Escalation
- Location
SKILL.md:14- Finding
Unnecessary Shell Execution Permission Violates Least Privilege
- Content
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Vulnerability Details
File Location:
SKILL.md, lines 14–18
Vulnerability Type: Excessive tool permission
Risk Level: Mediumyaml tools: - read - exec - glob - grepTechnical Analysis
The skill declares access to the
exectool, which permits shell-command execution under the privileges of the hosting agent process. The documented functionality consists of qualitative game-theory analysis performed from user-provided information and does not describe any operation requiring local command execution.Granting
exectherefore violates the principle of least privilege. Although the skill contains no explicit malicious command, unnecessarily exposing a command-execution channel increases the consequences of prompt injection or unsafe interpretation of untrusted protocol documentation. Read-only tools are sufficient for the stated analysis workflow.Attack Path
- An agent loads the skill and grants all tools declared in its front matter, including
exec. - The user supplies untrusted protocol content or instructions for analysis.
- Malicious content attempts to persuade the agent to treat embedded shell commands as required analysis steps.
- Because the skill has shell-execution permission, the agent may invoke
execrather than remaining within a read-only analysis boundary. - Any resulting command runs with the filesystem, process, and network permissions available to the agent host.
This attack path is conditional on the host agent following adversarial content; the reviewed file does not itself issue a command.
Impact Assessment
Successful exploitation could allow command execution within the security context of the agent process. Depending on host sandboxing, this may expose readable files, environment variables, project data, available credentials, local processes, or network-accessible resources. The scope is limited by the operating-system permissions, sand ...[truncated 67 chars]
- An agent loads the skill and grants all tools declared in its front matter, including
- Remediation
View remediation
Remediation Suggestions
Remove
execfrom the declared tool list and retain only the read-only capabilities required by the documented workflow:yaml tools: - read - glob - grepAdditionally:
- Configure the host platform to deny undeclared tool use.
- Treat analyzed protocol documents and user input strictly as data, not executable instructions.
- If command execution becomes necessary in a future version, expose narrowly scoped operations instead of a general shell.
- Run any unavoidable command in a sandbox with restricted filesystem access, no inherited secrets, minimal network access, command allowlisting, and explicit user confirmation.
- Add a permission-review check to release validation so that each declared tool is tied to a documented functional requirement.
