triage-verifier

name

triage-verifier

description

Verify confident security findings before they are marked proofed. Use when a finding has reached the `confident` state in finding-tracker and the current research chain has ended or plateaued, or when Codex needs to harden, rewrite, reproduce, package, or sanity-check a PoC for a bug bounty, audit, advisory, crash, CVE exposure, web/API issue, source-code finding, binary finding, fuzzing result, or exploit-chain finding. Do not interrupt productive investigation; use this as the proof gate before updating a finding to `proofed`.

Triage Verifier

Use this skill after finding-tracker shows a finding is confident and the current research chain has reached a natural stopping point. Do not interrupt active code review, reversing, debugging, fuzzing, or web testing that is still producing new evidence. This skill is the final proof gate before a finding can be marked proofed.

A finding is proofed only when it is reproduced, proven, or otherwise undeniable from a triager's perspective. The standard is not "the agent believes it"; the standard is "a skeptical security triager can follow the evidence and accept the issue, impact, and affected boundary."

Exploit-chain findings follow the same proof gate. Individual proofed component findings do not automatically proof the chain; the verifier must see that the combined path works or is otherwise undeniable.

Proof Gate

Mark proofed only when all required elements are present:

• Clear scope and target identity: asset, version/build/commit, account/role, environment, and authorization context.
• Exact vulnerability claim: what boundary fails and what security property is violated.
• Reproduction or undeniable evidence: deterministic steps, request/response, crash input, debugger trace, source/data-flow proof, patch diff, or controlled runtime evidence.
• Expected vs actual behavior.
• Impact evidence: data reached, privilege gained, control obtained, crash class, cross-tenant boundary, business effect, or exploitable primitive.
• Negative control or counterfactual where feasible: unauthorized state fails, owner succeeds, patched build does not crash, safe input does not trigger, or mitigated config blocks the issue.
• Preconditions and constraints: privileges, feature flags, timing, rate limits, victim interaction, browser behavior, platform, mitigations, and reliability.
• Safe, redacted PoC artifacts that a triager can run or reason through.

Do not proof when evidence is only scanner output, a hunch, a single ambiguous response, an unreproduced crash, a decompiler guess, a fuzzer crash without root cause, a version string match without affectedness, or an exploitability claim without reachability.

Outcomes

Choose exactly one:

• proofed: evidence meets the proof gate. Update finding-tracker with --state proofed and a proof reference.
• needs-more-work: evidence is plausible but missing a required proof element. Add a milestone explaining the gap and return to the right research skill.
• de-escalated: the finding is debunked or impact collapses. Update finding-tracker with --state de-escalated and the debunking reason.
• split-or-duplicate: proof shows this finding should merge into another finding or split into separate root causes. Update finding-tracker milestones before continuing.

Helper Script

Use scripts/proof_packet.py to create a stable proof packet under data/triage-verifier/. The script enforces required proof fields and prints a proof reference path.

python3 <skill-dir>/scripts/proof_packet.py \
  --finding-id F-0001 \
  --title "IDOR in invoice export" \
  --target "billing.example.com" \
  --claim "Changing invoice_id exports another tenant's invoice." \
  --reproduction "As tenant B user, request GET /api/invoices/A/export." \
  --expected "Tenant B user receives 403 or tenant-scoped not found." \
  --actual "Response is 200 with tenant A invoice PDF metadata." \
  --impact "Cross-tenant invoice disclosure." \
  --evidence "redacted request/response pair in notes" \
  --chain-step "Optional: F-0003 postcondition feeds F-0007 precondition" \
  --negative-control "Logged-out request returns 401; tenant A owner request succeeds." \
  --constraints "Requires authenticated standard user." \
  --poc "scripts/repro_invoice_export.py"

After successful verification, mark the finding proofed:

python3 <finding-tracker-dir>/scripts/findings.py update F-0001 \
  --state proofed \
  --proof-ref "data/triage-verifier/F-0001-proof.md" \
  --note "Triage verifier accepted reproduction and negative controls."

If verification fails, add a milestone or de-escalate instead of forcing proofed.

Verification Workflow

1. Load the finding from finding-tracker. Confirm it is confident, not merely discovered.
2. State why the active research chain is done for now: enough evidence, no new leads, user requested proofing, patch/report deadline, or handoff point.
3. Rebuild the claim from evidence. Identify the exact target, actor, boundary, controlled input, missing guard, and impact.
4. Reproduce safely when allowed. Prefer a clean environment, clean account, minimal input, and one variable changed at a time.
5. Add negative controls. Show what should fail, what should succeed, and what changes when the guard, patch, owner, tenant, role, config, or input changes.
6. Rewrite the PoC for verification. Make it minimal, deterministic, redacted, scoped, and self-checking. Leave screen-recordable human packaging to auto-triage after proofing.
7. For exploit chains, prove the composition: show each link's precondition, primitive, postcondition, and the exact point where one link feeds the next.
8. Decide outcome. Proof, return for more work, de-escalate, merge, or split.
9. Update finding-tracker with proof reference, milestone, or de-escalation.

If the user explicitly asks for multi-agent verification, use subagent-orchestration before the final verifier decision. Assign debaters to try to refute specific proof elements and provers to prepare bounded artifacts, but keep the final proofed, needs-more-work, de-escalated, or split-or-duplicate decision in this skill.

Verifier PoC Standards

A passable verifier PoC should:

• Be scoped to authorized assets and test data.
• State setup, accounts/roles, target version/build, environment, and cleanup.
• Reproduce the issue with the fewest steps or smallest script.
• Include expected and actual results.
• Include at least one negative control where feasible.
• Redact tokens, cookies, PII, secrets, internal customer data, and destructive payloads.
• Avoid unnecessary automation, scanning, sleeps, race amplification, or noisy retries.
• Fail closed with clear messages when preconditions are missing.
• Leave the target state unchanged or include safe cleanup steps.

Rewrite weak PoCs until they are verification-friendly:

• Replace vague prose with exact commands, requests, inputs, or UI steps.
• Replace screenshots-only evidence with request/response or runtime facts when possible.
• Replace brittle timing with deterministic waits or explicit state checks.
• Replace broad exploit scripts with minimal validation scripts.
• Replace "works on my account" with role/tenant/object comparisons.
• Replace raw crash dumps with minimized input, stack, sanitizer class, and root cause lead.

Verification By Finding Type

• Web/API: include role/tenant comparison, exact request/response, session state, object ownership, status codes, and redacted response proof.
• Source-code: include entry point, data flow, missing guard, failing test or reproducible call path, and patchable location.
• Binary/crash: include artifact hash, command/input, signal/exception, minimized input, stack/register/sanitizer evidence, and control/impact limits.
• Fuzzing: include harness, engine/sanitizer, minimized crash, reproducibility, deduplication, and root-cause handoff.
• CVE/exposure: include exact product/package version, affectedness comparison, vendor source, compensating controls, and environment reachability.
• AI/tool boundary: include untrusted content source, model/tool decision point, server-side policy check, exact tool/API effect, and tenant/secret boundary.
• Exploit chain: include chain finding ID, related finding IDs, chain packet, step preconditions and postconditions, end-to-end reproduction or undeniable composition proof, negative controls for broken links, escalated impact, and cleanup/blast-radius limits.

De-escalation Triggers

De-escalate when:

• The issue cannot be reproduced after controlling environment and prerequisites.
• A server-side check, patch, version, configuration, or compensating control blocks the claim.
• The data/action belongs to the same actor or tenant after canonical identity checks.
• The crash is a harness bug, expected assertion, duplicate, or non-security local DoS under unrealistic conditions.
• The dependency or product version is not affected.
• The PoC requires out-of-scope impact or assumptions the engagement does not allow.
• For exploit chains, an individual link is real but the links do not compose or the combined impact is not materially greater than an existing finding.

Record the debunking evidence in finding-tracker; do not just abandon the finding.

Output Format

Verification outcome: <proofed / needs-more-work / de-escalated / split-or-duplicate>
Finding: <finding ID and title>
Claim: <exact vulnerability claim>
Proof summary: <why a triager should accept or reject it>
Reproduction: <minimal steps or artifact references>
Negative controls: <controls run and results>
Impact: <validated impact and limits>
PoC quality: <passable / rewritten / still weak, with reason>
Proof reference: <path or verifier artifact, if proofed>
Tracker update: <state/milestone update performed or needed>
Next action: <none / auto-triage / return to skill / patch / report / de-escalate>

Keep proof packets and final reports concise, redacted, and reproducible.

Handoff

Use finding-tracker to update state and milestones. Return to web-app-security-inspection, code-vulnerability-review, binary-debugging, binary-reversing, fuzz-harness-builder, or cve-research when verification finds a specific missing proof element. Use exploit-chain-analysis when a chain proof fails because composition, impact escalation, or related-finding structure needs more work. Use auto-triage after proofing when the PoC needs to be human-operated, screen recorded, or attached as a clean reproduction kit. Use report-writer after proofing when the user needs a bounty submission, advisory draft, internal triage report, or remediation handoff.