gpt-researcher
Fail
Audited by Gen Agent Trust Hub on May 17, 2026
Risk Level: HIGHDATA_EXFILTRATIONCOMMAND_EXECUTIONEXTERNAL_DOWNLOADSPROMPT_INJECTION
Full Analysis
- [DATA_EXFILTRATION]: The skill accesses the sensitive configuration file
~/.zshenvusinggrepto extract theTAVILY_API_KEY.- [COMMAND_EXECUTION]: The skill instructs the agent to modify the user's shell profile (~/.zshenv) by appending sensitive API key exports. This serves as a persistence mechanism and risks exposing secrets in command history or shell configuration files.- [COMMAND_EXECUTION]: Arbitrary Python code is executed viapython -cand within a virtual environment created in/tmp.- [EXTERNAL_DOWNLOADS]: Fetches and installs dependencies from official package registries (includinggpt-researcherandlangchainmodules) to set up the research environment.- [PROMPT_INJECTION]: Indirect prompt injection surface identified as the skill processes untrusted content from the web and local documents while possessing file-write and network capabilities. - Ingestion points:
SKILL.mddescribes ingesting web search results and local files (PDF, DOCX, etc.) from paths specified inDOC_PATH. - Boundary markers: Absent; no clear delimiters are used to separate untrusted data from instructions.
- Capability inventory: The skill can execute shell commands, write files (e.g.,
background.md), and initiate network requests to various LLM and search providers. - Sanitization: No evidence of input validation or content sanitization before processing external data.
Recommendations
- AI detected serious security threats
Audit Metadata