Security audit
Security checks for vulnerabilities and agentic risk
This skill openly creates local research-paper alert subscriptions, queries OpenAlex, and registers OpenClaw cron jobs for scheduled summaries.
Before installing, confirm you want a local scheduled workflow: it will write subscription state under data/, query OpenAlex with your research topics, and create or remove named OpenClaw cron jobs when you add, update, or remove subscriptions. Do not put tokens or private channel credentials in the skill folder.
The skill documentation instructs use of shell, network access, environment variables, and local file writes, but it declares no explicit tool scope or permission boundaries. That increases the chance an agent can invoke broader capabilities than intended, especially for cron registration and local state changes, without user-visible constraints.
The description states the skill will 'push concise daily Chinese summaries,' which imposes a specific language by default. Under the policy, forcing a language/locale without user opt-in is a natural-language policy violation unless a justified regional constraint is documented.
This line says the skill will 'format concise Chinese summaries for delivery,' presenting Chinese as a fixed output language. There is no accompanying opt-in, alternative language option, or justification that the skill is region-specific.
Data is being sent to an external URL. This could be legitimate telemetry or data exfiltration. Manual review is recommended.
1. Builds English OpenAlex search queries from subscription topics.
2. Uses `from_publication_date` based on `--since`, saved `last_checked`, or `--days`.
3. Queries `https://api.openalex.org/works` sorted by recent publication date.
4. Converts OpenAlex works into paper records with title, authors, venue, date, DOI/link, citation count, and abstract.
5. Scores relevance against subscription topics plus common neuroimaging synonym groups.
6. Prefers requested journals/conferences but keeps highly relevant adjacent results.
The output style explicitly says default summaries are 'concise Chinese bullet points,' which sets a language constraint in the skill instructions. Because the file does not offer a user language choice or a documented compliance reason, this violates the language/locale policy.
subprocess module calls execute external commands. Without careful input validation, this enables command injection.
# Some embedded Windows Python builds lack SSL support. Fall back to curl
# when available so the skill can still query OpenAlex over HTTPS.
try:
result = subprocess.run(
["curl", "-L", "-sS", "--max-time", "30", "-A", "openclaw-research-paper-push/1.0", url],
capture_output=True,
text=True,
The skill's stated purpose is managing research-paper subscriptions and summaries, but the implementation invokes external binaries (curl and openclaw) through subprocess.run. While querying OpenAlex and scheduling alerts are in scope, spawning OS-level commands is a broader capability than the manifest justifies and increases operational power beyond a typical paper-alert workflow.
This code file contains multiple hard-coded Chinese user-facing messages, beginning at L158 and continuing throughout the CLI flow, while the script description and arguments are otherwise in English. That creates a natural-language locale policy issue because users are not given any opt-in or configuration to choose the output language.
subprocess module calls execute external commands. Without careful input validation, this enables command injection.
"--timezone", subscription.get("timezone") or "Asia/Shanghai",
"--script", f"python scripts/manage_papers.py run --id {subscription['id']}",
]
subprocess.run(cmd)
print(f"⏰ Cron 任务已创建：{subscription['time']} ({subscription.get('timezone') or 'Asia/Shanghai'})")
subprocess module calls execute external commands. Without careful input validation, this enables command injection.
"--timezone", subscription.get("timezone") or "Asia/Shanghai",
"--script", f"python scripts/manage_papers.py run --id {subscription['id']}",
]
subprocess.run(cmd)
print(f"⏰ Cron 任务已创建：{subscription['time']} ({subscription.get('timezone') or 'Asia/Shanghai'})")
No suspicious patterns detected.