Defining Pentest Scope

Defining Pentest Scope

Overview

A pentest scope is a list of permission boundaries. Get it wrong and you either (a) miss real exposure by failing to test something the customer expected covered, or (b) probe something you weren't allowed to touch and turn the engagement into a liability event. Both failure modes share a root cause: the scope list was a vague narrative ("test the marketing site and the API") rather than a machine-readable, syntactically-validated, conflict-checked artifact.

This skill takes the in-scope and out-of-scope sections from a ROE and produces three deliverables:

1. Normalized target list — every entry parsed into a structured form (host vs CIDR vs URL path vs cloud account vs SaaS tenant), with explicit type tagging. Downstream cluster 1-4 skills consume this list rather than raw strings.
2. IP allowlist — flat list of IPv4 and IPv6 addresses / CIDRs ready to paste into scanner configurations (nmap target list, Burp scope file, AWS WAF allowlist, etc.).
3. Conflict report — Findings flagging syntactically-malformed entries, overlap between in-scope and out-of-scope, inclusion of reserved ranges (RFC1918, link-local, multicast), and known third-party SaaS infrastructure that needs separate authz.

The skill does NOT perform DNS resolution or network probing — that would itself be a "first probe" of the target, which by the governance model must happen AFTER scope is locked.

When the skill produces findings

Prerequisites

• Python 3.9+
• ROE file at ./roe.yaml (or pass --roe FILE)
• Optional .scope-extension.yaml listing additional targets added mid-engagement (each must reference an authz amendment)

Target syntax forms

Instructions

Step 1 — Provide the scope source

The skill reads the ROE's in_scope_targets and out_of_scope_targets sections by default. Override with --roe FILE if the engagement ROE isn't at the default path.

Step 2 — Run the scope definition

python3 ./scripts/define_scope.py --roe engagements/acme-2026-q2/roe.yaml

Options:

Usage: define_scope.py [OPTIONS]

Options:
  --roe FILE             Path to ROE YAML (default: ./roe.yaml)
  --emit-allowlist FILE  Write flat IP allowlist to FILE
  --emit-targets FILE    Write normalized target list to FILE
  --extension FILE       Additional scope extension YAML
  --output FILE          Findings output
  --format FMT           json | jsonl | markdown (default: markdown)
  --min-severity SEV     default info

Step 3 — Review the conflict report

CRITICAL findings (overlap between in-scope and out-of-scope) must be resolved before any scan runs. Either narrow the in-scope range or remove the out-of-scope overlap; the customer's authorizer decides which.

HIGH findings (malformed targets, third-party SaaS, reserved ranges) require explicit acknowledgement — either fix the entry or document in the ROE why the range is intentionally included.

Step 4 — Hand off the allowlist

python3 ./scripts/define_scope.py --roe engagements/acme-2026-q2/roe.yaml \
    --emit-allowlist /tmp/allowed-ips.txt \
    --emit-targets /tmp/normalized-targets.json

The allowlist file is one IP/CIDR per line, ready to paste into:

• nmap: nmap -iL /tmp/allowed-ips.txt
• AWS WAF rule: convert to JSON via your standard tooling
• Burp Suite: paste into Target → Scope → Include
• This pack's cluster 1 skills: pass via the target argument

Examples

Example 1 — Generate scope artifacts for a new engagement

python3 ./scripts/define_scope.py \
    --roe engagements/acme-2026-q2/roe.yaml \
    --emit-allowlist engagements/acme-2026-q2/scope/allowed-ips.txt \
    --emit-targets engagements/acme-2026-q2/scope/normalized-targets.json \
    --output engagements/acme-2026-q2/scope/scope-report.md

Example 2 — Validate a mid-engagement scope extension

python3 ./scripts/define_scope.py \
    --roe engagements/acme-2026-q2/roe.yaml \
    --extension engagements/acme-2026-q2/scope-extension-20260615.yaml

The extension YAML follows the same target format. The skill validates that every extension entry has an associated authorization reference and emits a CRITICAL finding for any extension entry that doesn't.

Example 3 — Pre-scan validation gate

python3 ./scripts/define_scope.py --roe engagements/acme-2026-q2/roe.yaml \
    --min-severity high \
    --format json --output /tmp/scope-issues.json
jq -e '. == []' /tmp/scope-issues.json || { echo "Scope issues block scan"; exit 1; }

Output

JSON / JSONL / Markdown per lib/report.py. Exit codes: 0 clean, 1 high/critical, 2 error.

Each Finding includes:

• id — scope::<issue>::<target> (e.g. scope::malformed::foo[bar)
• severity — CRITICAL / HIGH / MEDIUM / INFO
• category — engagement-scope
• summary — what's wrong with the entry
• evidence — original entry, parsed form, conflict source, line in ROE

Error Handling

• ROE missing → emits CRITICAL finding, exits 1.
• In-scope section missing or empty → CRITICAL finding, exits 1.
• Unparseable entry → HIGH finding per entry, scan continues for other entries.
• Extension file referenced but missing → HIGH finding.
• IPv6 CIDR with very large mask (e.g. ::/0) → CRITICAL — almost certainly a typo; refuse to expand.

Resources

• references/THEORY.md — Why scope is the load-bearing artifact of pentest legality, target-type taxonomy, known SaaS-range classification (AWS, Cloudflare, GCP, Azure), DNS resolution policy (when/whether to resolve at scope-definition time), CIDR-overlap detection theory
• references/PLAYBOOK.md — Per-engagement-type scope templates (web app, internal network, red team, cloud account, SaaS tenant), scope-extension protocol, allowlist-emission patterns per scanner, common scope-mistake patterns