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Security audit

Youtube Lecture Analyzer

Security checks for vulnerabilities and agentic risk

Overview

This skill fetches a user-requested YouTube transcript and creates a local analysis report; its behavior is mostly coherent, with a notable summary-only option bug and local transcript retention to understand before use.

Install only if you are comfortable with a Chinese/bilingual YouTube transcript workflow that saves a local text report containing transcript content. Do not rely on --summary-only for privacy, because this version still writes transcript text to disk.

Vulnerability Patterns
  • 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
  • Unauthorized Access and Privilege EscalationObtains permissions beyond the task's legitimate needs
Vulnerability Patterns
  • 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
  • Supply ChainUnpinned Dependencies, External Script Fetching, Obfuscated Code
Findings (5)

Natural-Language Policy Violations

Medium
Category
Not specified by scanner
Confidence
95% confidence
Finding

The file requires a bilingual summary including a fixed Chinese summary component ("中文200字 + 英文200字"), which imposes a specific language requirement on all users. The policy for this category says to flag language or locale constraints unless the skill offers user choice or clearly justifies the restriction.

Content

No source excerpt is available for this finding.

Natural-Language Policy Violations

Medium
Category
Not specified by scanner
Confidence
84% confidence
Finding

The manifest presents the skill entirely in Chinese and explicitly states it produces bilingual summaries, but it does not indicate that language selection is optional or user-configurable. Per the policy, language or locale constraints should either offer user choice or be clearly justified.

Content

No source excerpt is available for this finding.

Natural-Language Policy Violations

Medium
Category
Not specified by scanner
Confidence
91% confidence
Finding

The script description, progress messages, and one of the primary outputs are hardcoded in Chinese, and the CLI's optional language argument applies to transcript fetching rather than interface/output locale. This creates a language-policy issue because the skill imposes a specific language without user opt-in or an explicit justified locale restriction.

Content

No source excerpt is available for this finding.

Intent-Code Divergence

Medium
Category
Not specified by scanner
Confidence
95% confidence
Finding

The script advertises a --summary-only mode but ignores it and still fetches, returns, and persists transcript content. This can violate user expectations and cause unintended retention or disclosure of potentially sensitive transcript data, especially in automation where callers rely on the documented privacy behavior.

Content

No source excerpt is available for this finding.

Missing User Warnings

Medium
Category
Not specified by scanner
Confidence
93% confidence
Finding

The script writes transcript contents to a local file by default without consent, minimization, or warning. Transcript text may contain copyrighted, private, or sensitive information, and automatic persistence increases the chance of accidental disclosure through shared machines, backups, logs, or later processing.

Content

No source excerpt is available for this finding.

Static analysis

Detected: suspicious.install_untrusted_source

Install source points to URL shortener or raw IP.

Warn
Code
suspicious.install_untrusted_source
Location
_meta.json:11