Security Audit

security-audit

Mission

Find real security vulnerabilities in code before they are exploited. This skill is proactive — it audits code for security weaknesses, not just responds to incidents.

For writing secure code patterns (policies, auth, CSRF), use the security skill instead.

When to use

Use this skill when:

• Auditing a codebase or module for security risks
• analysis-autonomous-mode routes here after detecting risky patterns
• Reviewing code that handles user input, authentication, or authorization
• Checking for vulnerabilities before a release or deployment

Do NOT use when:

• Writing new auth/policy code — route to security
• Hunting for functional bugs — route to bug-analyzer (proactive mode)
• Investigating performance — route to performance-analysis
• You need a pre-implementation threat model for a new feature — route to threat-modeling
• You need end-to-end authorization analysis for one route/action — route to authz-review

Procedure: Security audit

0. False-positive gate — restate the claim before reporting

Before any finding enters the report, restate it as one falsifiable sentence naming all three of:

1. Privilege level — what access the attacker already has (anonymous, authenticated user, tenant admin, CI runner).
2. Execution context — where the vulnerable code runs (request handler, queue worker, sandboxed template, build step).
3. Attacker precondition — the concrete state or input the attacker must control to trigger it.

If any of the three cannot be named concretely, the item is not a finding yet — trace further or drop it with a one-line reason.

Rationalizations to Reject:

Standard vs. Deep verification routing:

• Standard — traced data flow + all three claim elements named → report with the normal field list.
• Deep — severity would be High/Critical, OR the precondition chain crosses a trust boundary you did not personally trace → run a devil's-advocate pass first: actively try to refute the finding (existing middleware? framework default? type system? config?). Report only what survives; findings the pass killed are listed one-line under Rejected candidates so the triage is auditable.

1. Map attack surface

Identify all entry points where untrusted data enters:

• HTTP request parameters, headers, cookies
• File uploads
• API payloads (JSON, XML, form data)
• Webhook callbacks
• Queue job payloads from external sources
• Import files (CSV, Excel, XML)
• URL path segments and query strings

2. Trace trust boundaries

For each entry point, trace where user input flows:

User Input → Controller → Validation → Service → DB/File/External
                 ↓              ↓           ↓
            Is it sanitized?  Complete?  Used safely?

3. Check vulnerability categories

Worked example (fail-open): if (!$gate->check($user)) { … } wrapped in a try/catch that logs and continues fails open — an exception in the gate grants access. Finding shape: Category Insecure defaults, Evidence the catch block file:line, Fix fail closed — rethrow or deny on gate error.

3b. Out of scope — route, do not guess

The table above names vulnerability classes, which are stable. This package carries no cryptographic parameter, key size, work factor, cipher suite, or TLS version floor: a value copied here reads authoritative long after it stops being true. Report the finding, route the fix to https://cheatsheetseries.owasp.org/ — Cryptographic Storage, Transport Layer Security, Password Storage, XML External Entity Prevention — and never name a value from memory. Rationale and reopening condition: ADR-238.

4. Framework-specific checks

→ Laravel-specific checks: see laravel § Security audit checks.

5. Dependency audit

• Check composer.lock for known vulnerable packages
• Check package-lock.json for frontend vulnerabilities
• Identify outdated packages with known CVEs
• Check if security patches are available

Output format

1. Emit one entry per vulnerability using the field list below; one finding = one block, never merge.
2. Category must map to an OWASP Top 10 (or LLM Top 10) bucket; Severity must use Low / Medium / High / Critical with a single Exploitability tag.
3. Close with a Recommended Fix Order ranked by exploitability × blast radius and tag each line with Confidence.

For each vulnerability:

• Vulnerability: concise title
• Category: OWASP category (Injection, Broken Auth, etc.)
• Location: file and line
• Severity: Low / Medium / High / Critical
• Exploitability: How easy to exploit (trivial / requires auth / complex)
• Impact: What an attacker could achieve
• Evidence: code reference showing the weakness
• Fix: concrete mitigation
• Confidence: Low / Medium / High

After the findings, add a Rejected candidates section: one line per look-dangerous-but-benign pattern the Step-0 gate killed, with the traced reason ("raw SQL string is a static migration constant — no user input reaches it"). An audit that rejects nothing has usually skipped the gate.

Integration with other skills

• analysis-autonomous-mode — routes here when security concerns are detected
• security — complementary: security is about writing secure code, this is about finding holes
• universal-project-analysis — provides context about packages and framework usage
• bug-analyzer — some bugs have security implications (chain when found)
• untrusted-input-defense / lethal-trifecta-guard (rules) — prompt-injection / agent-config defense; consult when the audited code ingests untrusted content or wires an autonomous egress path

Gotcha

• Don't report theoretical vulnerabilities without a concrete attack vector — false positives erode trust.
• The model tends to flag framework-handled security as issues (e.g., Laravel's CSRF or Rails' protect_from_forgery is already handled).
• Always check if a finding is already mitigated by middleware or configuration before reporting it.

Do NOT

• Do NOT report theoretical risks that require impossible preconditions
• Do NOT ignore user input flows — always trace from entry to usage
• Do NOT assume frameworks handle everything — verify middleware and config
• Do NOT confuse code quality issues with security vulnerabilities
• Do NOT skip dependency checking — known CVEs are real risks

See also

• docs/threat-model.md — package attack surface and trust boundary documentation.