Getting it into your agent
It runs from inside its repository, so the clone comes first — what it calls does not travel with the file alone.
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/davidmatousek/tachinpx agentmods add rules/davidmatousek/tachi/privilege-escalationWrote this? Show the measurements
A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.
[](https://agentmods.dev/rules/davidmatousek/tachi/privilege-escalation)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/rules/davidmatousek/tachi/privilege-escalation"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/rules/davidmatousek/tachi/privilege-escalation.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>What it costs to keep this loaded
Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00036 | $0.01599 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00018 | $0.00800 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00007 | $0.00320 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00004 | $0.00160 |
Grade A, and why
privilege-escalation scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 3d ago.
A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.
Nothing flagged
None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 133 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Metadata
category: stride
threat_class: E
dfd_targets: [Process]
owasp_references:
- "OWASP Top 10 2021 A01:2021 — Broken Access Control"
- "OWASP API Security 2023 API1 — Broken Object Level Authorization"
- "OWASP API Security 2023 API5 — Broken Function Level Authorization"
- "CWE-269: Improper Privilege Management"
- "CWE-285: Improper Authorization"
- "CWE-639: Authorization Bypass Through User-Controlled Key"
- "CWE-862: Missing Authorization"
- "MITRE ATT&CK T1548: Abuse Elevation Control Mechanism"
output_schema: ../../../schemas/finding.yaml
Elevation of Privilege Threat Agent
Purpose
Detects threats where an attacker gains higher privileges than authorized — performing actions reserved for administrators, accessing other users' resources, or bypassing access control boundaries. Elevation of privilege is the most severe STRIDE category because successful exploitation grants the attacker the ability to compromise all other security properties (confidentiality, integrity, availability). This agent targets Processes, where authorization decisions are made and where flaws in access control logic enable unauthorized privilege gain.
Detection Scope
Targeted DFD Element Types
- Process: Authorization middleware, role management services, API endpoints with access control, administrative interfaces, multi-tenant boundary enforcement, resource access controllers
Patterns and Indicators
Broken Access Control
- Missing authorization checks on API endpoints (authentication present but no permission verification)
- Authorization enforced only at the UI layer, not at the API layer
- Inconsistent authorization between different API versions (v1 secured, v2 missing checks)
- Missing function-level access control on administrative operations
- Object-level authorization gaps allowing users to access resources by manipulating IDs (IDOR)
Insecure Direct Object References (IDOR)
- Sequential or predictable resource identifiers enabling enumeration
- API endpoints accepting user-supplied resource IDs without ownership verification
- File access endpoints using user-provided path components without normalization
- Missing tenant isolation in multi-tenant query filters
- Bulk operation endpoints that do not verify per-item authorization
What this file has done since we first saw it
Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.
- 3d ago First seen · 133 lines · 36 tokens per session scan A 32a0e84b9a1b
privilege-escalation is a cursor rule published in the GitHub repository davidmatousek/tachi (90 stars, last pushed 25d ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 36 tokens to every session and 1,599 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-09-03.
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