Recon Skills is a pack of security-testing skills covering reconnaissance, web applications, APIs, authentication, vulnerability validation, cloud infrastructure, and reporting. Security professionals use it for authorized assessments of systems they own or have written permission to test. The catalogue entries are individual skills from the pack.
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.
npx skills add uphiago/recon-skills --skill hunt-xxegit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/uphiago/recon-skillsWrote 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/skills/uphiago/recon-skills/hunt-xxe)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/uphiago/recon-skills/hunt-xxe"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/uphiago/recon-skills/hunt-xxe/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.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/uphiago/recon-skills/hunt-xxe"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/uphiago/recon-skills/hunt-xxe.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>- NVIDIA SkillSpector warn
SkillSpector: 28 findings, up to high
These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →
- high Privilege Escalation · line 16 Code accesses credential files (SSH keys, AWS credentials, etc.). This could indicate credential theft attempts.Fix: Remove references to credential paths. Use environment variables or secrets managers. For docs, use placeholder paths (e.g., /path/to/config). Never load .env or token files in production code paths.
- high Privilege Escalation · line 87 Code accesses credential files (SSH keys, AWS credentials, etc.). This could indicate credential theft attempts.Fix: Remove references to credential paths. Use environment variables or secrets managers. For docs, use placeholder paths (e.g., /path/to/config). Never load .env or token files in production code paths.
- high Privilege Escalation · line 111 Code accesses credential files (SSH keys, AWS credentials, etc.). This could indicate credential theft attempts.Fix: Remove references to credential paths. Use environment variables or secrets managers. For docs, use placeholder paths (e.g., /path/to/config). Never load .env or token files in production code paths.
- high Privilege Escalation · line 138 Code accesses credential files (SSH keys, AWS credentials, etc.). This could indicate credential theft attempts.Fix: Remove references to credential paths. Use environment variables or secrets managers. For docs, use placeholder paths (e.g., /path/to/config). Never load .env or token files in production code paths.
- high Privilege Escalation · line 172 Code accesses credential files (SSH keys, AWS credentials, etc.). This could indicate credential theft attempts.Fix: Remove references to credential paths. Use environment variables or secrets managers. For docs, use placeholder paths (e.g., /path/to/config). Never load .env or token files in production code paths.
- high Privilege Escalation · line 229 Code accesses credential files (SSH keys, AWS credentials, etc.). This could indicate credential theft attempts.Fix: Remove references to credential paths. Use environment variables or secrets managers. For docs, use placeholder paths (e.g., /path/to/config). Never load .env or token files in production code paths.
- high Privilege Escalation · line 242 Code accesses credential files (SSH keys, AWS credentials, etc.). This could indicate credential theft attempts.Fix: Remove references to credential paths. Use environment variables or secrets managers. For docs, use placeholder paths (e.g., /path/to/config). Never load .env or token files in production code paths.
- high Privilege Escalation · line 243 Code accesses credential files (SSH keys, AWS credentials, etc.). This could indicate credential theft attempts.Fix: Remove references to credential paths. Use environment variables or secrets managers. For docs, use placeholder paths (e.g., /path/to/config). Never load .env or token files in production code paths.
- high Privilege Escalation · line 244 Code accesses credential files (SSH keys, AWS credentials, etc.). This could indicate credential theft attempts.Fix: Remove references to credential paths. Use environment variables or secrets managers. For docs, use placeholder paths (e.g., /path/to/config). Never load .env or token files in production code paths.
- high Privilege Escalation · line 256 Code accesses credential files (SSH keys, AWS credentials, etc.). This could indicate credential theft attempts.Fix: Remove references to credential paths. Use environment variables or secrets managers. For docs, use placeholder paths (e.g., /path/to/config). Never load .env or token files in production code paths.
- high Privilege Escalation · line 259 Code accesses credential files (SSH keys, AWS credentials, etc.). This could indicate credential theft attempts.Fix: Remove references to credential paths. Use environment variables or secrets managers. For docs, use placeholder paths (e.g., /path/to/config). Never load .env or token files in production code paths.
- high Privilege Escalation · line 270 Code accesses credential files (SSH keys, AWS credentials, etc.). This could indicate credential theft attempts.Fix: Remove references to credential paths. Use environment variables or secrets managers. For docs, use placeholder paths (e.g., /path/to/config). Never load .env or token files in production code paths.
- high Privilege Escalation · line 334 Code accesses credential files (SSH keys, AWS credentials, etc.). This could indicate credential theft attempts.Fix: Remove references to credential paths. Use environment variables or secrets managers. For docs, use placeholder paths (e.g., /path/to/config). Never load .env or token files in production code paths.
- high Privilege Escalation · line 347 Code accesses credential files (SSH keys, AWS credentials, etc.). This could indicate credential theft attempts.Fix: Remove references to credential paths. Use environment variables or secrets managers. For docs, use placeholder paths (e.g., /path/to/config). Never load .env or token files in production code paths.
- high Privilege Escalation · line 369 Code accesses credential files (SSH keys, AWS credentials, etc.). This could indicate credential theft attempts.Fix: Remove references to credential paths. Use environment variables or secrets managers. For docs, use placeholder paths (e.g., /path/to/config). Never load .env or token files in production code paths.
- high Privilege Escalation · line 387 Code accesses credential files (SSH keys, AWS credentials, etc.). This could indicate credential theft attempts.Fix: Remove references to credential paths. Use environment variables or secrets managers. For docs, use placeholder paths (e.g., /path/to/config). Never load .env or token files in production code paths.
- high Privilege Escalation · line 430 Code accesses credential files (SSH keys, AWS credentials, etc.). This could indicate credential theft attempts.Fix: Remove references to credential paths. Use environment variables or secrets managers. For docs, use placeholder paths (e.g., /path/to/config). Never load .env or token files in production code paths.
- high Privilege Escalation · line 441 Code accesses credential files (SSH keys, AWS credentials, etc.). This could indicate credential theft attempts.Fix: Remove references to credential paths. Use environment variables or secrets managers. For docs, use placeholder paths (e.g., /path/to/config). Never load .env or token files in production code paths.
- high Privilege Escalation · line 445 Code accesses credential files (SSH keys, AWS credentials, etc.). This could indicate credential theft attempts.Fix: Remove references to credential paths. Use environment variables or secrets managers. For docs, use placeholder paths (e.g., /path/to/config). Never load .env or token files in production code paths.
- high Privilege Escalation · line 16 Code accesses credential files (SSH keys, AWS credentials, etc.). This could indicate credential theft attempts.Fix: Remove references to credential paths. Use environment variables or secrets managers. For docs, use placeholder paths (e.g., /path/to/config). Never load .env or token files in production code paths.
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 | $0.00127 | $0.06258 |
| Opus 5 | $0.00063 | $0.03129 |
| Sonnet 5 | $0.00025 | $0.01252 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00013 | $0.00626 |
Grade C, and why
hunt-xxe 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 8d 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.
Reaches for credential fileshighPrivilege escalation
SSH keys, cloud credentials, git-credentials, .npmrc, /etc/shadow: reading these is how a config file becomes a credential leak.
- **`hunt-file-upload`** — XXE most often hides inside file-upload features that quietly parse XML (DOCX/XLSX/PPTX, SVG, GPX, KML, OOXML, SOAP attachments). Chain primitive: upload DOCX with malicious `[Content_Types].xm Makes network callslowCapability
Not a fault in itself. Listed so you know the mod talks to something, and to what.
curl --max-time 30 --connect-timeout 10 -X POST https://target.com/api/endpoint \ How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 445 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Crown Jewel Targets
XXE is a critical-severity vulnerability that consistently pays at the top of bug bounty scales ($5,000–$30,000+) due to its direct path to sensitive data exfiltration and SSRF. Highest-value targets:
- Large enterprise platforms with XML-heavy backend integrations (finance, logistics, ride-sharing APIs)
- Domains with file-read capability —
/etc/passwd,/etc/shadow, internal config files, AWS metadata endpoints - Subdomains sharing backend infrastructure — one XXE endpoint can pivot to internal services across dozens of domains (as demonstrated by 26+ Uber domains via a single entry point)
- API gateways accepting XML content types — especially REST APIs that silently accept
Content-Type: application/xml - File upload features — SVG, DOCX, XLSX, PDF, PPTX parsers on the server side
- SAML/SSO endpoints — SAML assertions are XML-based and frequently vulnerable
- Office/document processing services — any feature that converts or processes user-supplied documents
Attack Surface Signals
URL Patterns
/api/v*/xml
/upload
/import
/parse
/convert
/saml/acs
/sso/saml
/feed
/rss
/sitemap
/webdav
/soap/*
/wsdl
/service.asmx
/xmlrpc
/graphql (multipart with XML)
Request/Response Headers
Content-Type: application/xml
Content-Type: text/xml
Content-Type: application/soap+xml
Content-Type: multipart/form-data ← check file upload fields
Accept: application/xml
X-Content-Type-Options: (absent — good sign of loose parsing)
JavaScript Patterns (source recon)
// Look for in JS bundles
XMLSerializer
DOMParser
parseFromString
new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLDOM")
$.parseXML(
xml2js
libxmljs
lxml
Tech Stack Signals
- Java stacks: Spring, Struts, JAX-WS — default XML parsers (SAX, DOM) are XXE-vulnerable without explicit hardening
- PHP:
simplexml_load_string(),DOMDocument::loadXML()— vulnerable by default pre-PHP 8 - Python:
lxml,xml.etree(safe by default),xml.sax(unsafe) - Ruby:
Nokogiriolder versions,REXML - Node.js:
xml2js,libxmljs,fast-xml-parser(older versions) - WSDL/SOAP services: Always test — legacy XML parsing virtually guaranteed
- File parsers: Apache POI (Java), python-docx, LibreOffice integrations
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.
- 8d ago First seen · 445 lines · 127 tokens per session scan C 0e92f6244af7
hunt-xxe is a skill published in the GitHub repository uphiago/recon-skills (1,254 stars, last pushed 10d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 127 tokens to every session and 6,258 once invoked, about $0.0006 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it C with 2 findings (reaches for credential files, makes network calls). No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-09-03.
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