SAST Finding Validation

This is the only active skill in the pack: it sends real HTTP requests to a running target to confirm or refute findings. Everything else is static. Treat it accordingly — authorization and scope come before any packet.

0. Posture (non-negotiable defaults)

• Prove existence, do not exploit. The bar is a benign proof-of-existence, not impact. Boolean/time diff for SQLi; OOB callback for SSRF; alert(document.domain) for XSS; read your own neighbouring object for IDOR. Never dump data, write files, run shells, or pivot. Escalate to real exploitation ONLY if the user explicitly authorizes it for a specific finding.
• In-scope only. Only touch hosts/paths the user has confirmed are in scope and authorized for active testing.
• Non-destructive. Use test accounts and safe-to-write test data. No deletes, no state you can't undo, no bulk enumeration of real users.

1. Authorization & scope gate (do this before anything active)

Confirm, and record, before sending a single request:

• The user is authorized to actively test this target (engagement/pentest/CTF/own system). If they cannot confirm, stop — remain static-only.
• Environment: production vs staging/test. Prefer non-prod. If prod, get explicit go-ahead and tighten the non-destructive rules further.
• Scope allowlist (hosts/domains/paths) and explicit out-of-scope items.
• Testing window, rate limits, and any WAF/anti-automation the user knows about.

If any of these are missing, ask for them first (use AskUserQuestion for the blockers). Do not proceed to Phase 2 with an unconfirmed scope.

2. Intake — information required from the user

Request the following (ask only for what's missing; group the questions):

Targets

• Web base URL(s); mobile/API base URL(s); which findings map to which host.
• For mobile: is there request signing / certificate pinning? (If yes, requests must be relayed through the instrumented app / Frida, not plain Repeater.)

Identities (needed for access-control tests)

• Unauthenticated baseline (no creds).
• Low-privilege user A — session cookie / bearer token / API key, or login creds.
• Low-privilege user B of the same role — for horizontal IDOR (A tries to reach B's objects). Provide B's object IDs where known.
• High-privilege / admin — to define what "vertical escalation" means.

Session mechanics

• How to authenticate (a login request, or ready-made tokens/cookies).
• CSRF token location and how to fetch a fresh one; token lifetime.
• MFA/step-up handling; how sessions expire and how to refresh.

Test plumbing

• Proxy (Burp) host:port if requests should route through it.
• An OOB/collaborator domain for blind SSRF/XXE/RCE/deser callbacks.
• Safe test data / disposable records you may create or modify.
• Any endpoints that are destructive and must NOT be triggered.

Store the answers as run configuration. Never write real secrets into findings/*.md — keep them in the live session only; the request blocks stay placeholdered.

3. Phase 1 — Access-control baseline (ALWAYS FIRST)

Before validating individual findings, establish the trust model. This both catches the highest-impact class and produces the identities every later test uses.

1. Verify each identity works — confirm A, B, admin sessions are valid and map to the expected principal (hit a "who am I"/profile endpoint per identity).
2. Unauthenticated access — request a sample of protected endpoints with no session. Anything that returns protected data unauthenticated = confirmed BAC.
3. Horizontal (IDOR/BOLA) — as user A, request user B's object references (ids/UUIDs from the findings). Getting B's data proves it. Read-only, one object.
4. Vertical (BFLA) — as low-priv A, call admin-only functions/routes. Success = confirmed privilege escalation.
5. Session/token scoping — expired/rotated token still accepted? token from A accepted for B's tenant? Record.

Write each result to the relevant finding (findings/19-broken-access-control-idor.md etc.) with a Confirmed (PoC) / False positive verdict, and keep the identity map for Phase 2.

4. Phase 2 — Validate findings in priority order

Order: after the access-control baseline, take the remaining findings in descending priority — chain-critical and Critical/High first, then Medium/Low (follow the run order in sast-methodology; use sast-final-report's ranking if it has already run). Skip findings marked Reachable over: N/A — validate those by code/config inspection or configuration review, not by HTTP.

For each finding:

1. Load its Request block from the findings file. Substitute real TARGET_HOST, session/token, CSRF, and the benign <PAYLOAD-MARKER>.
2. Baseline first — send the request with a neutral value; capture status, length, timing, reflection points.
3. Send the proof probe — the benign existence marker for that class (see the proof matrix in references/burp-request-format.md). For blind classes, point at the OOB domain and watch for the callback.
4. Observe the indicator — the specific differential that proves the flaw: status/length change, boolean true-vs-false divergence, time delay, reflected/ executed marker, OOB hit, Location header, cross-identity data.
5. Decide the verdict (see §5). Re-run once to confirm it's stable, not noise.
6. Record into the finding's Validation result block and set the Validation: header field. Include the exact observed indicator and the identity used. Do not paste live secrets — reference them as placeholders.

5. Verdict rules

• Confirmed (PoC) — the benign proof produced the expected, repeatable indicator. State the one-line evidence. This is enough; stop here.
• False positive — the taint is actually neutralized or unreachable at runtime: effective server-side sanitization/parameterization observed, route/parameter doesn't exist or isn't attacker-controlled at runtime, framework encodes the context, or the sink is dead code. Explain why it's an FP.
• Inconclusive — blocked by a WAF, missing credentials, rate limit, or an environment gap. A WAF block is not a fix — mark Inconclusive and note the obstacle, do not downgrade to FP. Suggest what's needed to conclude.

Keep verdict independent of severity: a Confirmed Low stays Low; an FP Critical is removed from the active risk list but kept with its FP rationale.

6. Phase 3 — Chain validation

Individual findings confirm links; this phase confirms the chains — that the primitives actually hand off in sequence to reach the end impact.

This is Stage 2 of the two-stage chain flow. Stage 1 — proposing and presenting the chain hypotheses to the user (ideas first) — happens before this, in sast-methodology Phase 5 / sast-final-report. Here you validate only the chains the user chose to pursue. See references/chain-validation-playbook.md for the per-chain benign handoff recipe and the manual-continuation-kit format.

Extra authorization gate. A chain reaches real impact (RCE, account takeover, cloud compromise) far faster than a single link. Treat chain validation as a higher-risk activity: confirm the user authorizes chain validation specifically, and keep the default posture — prove the chain is feasible (each handoff works), do not cause the end impact.

Preconditions. Only validate a chain whose every link is already Confirmed (PoC). If any link is False positive, the chain is Broken; if any link is Inconclusive / Not validated, the chain is at best Theoretical.

Method — prove each handoff, in order:

1. Pull the chain's ordered links and the primitive each hands to the next (provides → consumes) from the report / catalog.
2. Re-establish link 1's primitive live (e.g. SSRF fires → OUTBOUND_REQUEST).
3. For each subsequent link, demonstrate that the previous primitive actually satisfies this link's precondition with a benign probe — e.g. the leaked token is accepted by the next endpoint (a harmless whoami), the reflected input is executed in the victim context, the open-redirect target is honored by the OAuth redirect_uri. Stop at feasibility; do not perform the destructive end action.
4. Record which handoff (if any) fails and why — that is the natural break point.

Chain verdicts:

• Validated (end-to-end PoC) — every link Confirmed and every handoff shown benignly. The chain is real.
• Links-confirmed / handoff-unproven — links are Confirmed but a handoff could not be shown non-destructively (needs authorized exploitation or specific state).
• Broken — a link is an FP, or a handoff provably fails (token rejected, WAF severs it, target not honored).
• Theoretical — one or more links unvalidated / Inconclusive; the graph says it is possible but it is not proven.

When you can't validate it — hand off, don't drop. If a chain ends Links-confirmed, Broken at a handoff, or Theoretical — i.e. you could not prove it end-to-end — emit a manual continuation kit so the user can continue the attempt themselves:

• the chain hypothesis (ordered links + the primitive handoff each performs),
• which links are Confirmed, and exactly which handoff you got stuck on and why (rejected token, redirect not honored, state not reachable, scope/authorization limit, non-destructive ceiling),
• the exact next request(s) to try — Burp-pasteable — and the signal that would prove the handoff,
• any precondition still needed (funded/priv account, specific role, OOB host).

Record the kit in findings/VALIDATION-LOG.md and surface it to the user. The point is that Claude failing to prove a chain must never block the user from proving it — they pick up exactly where you stopped.

Blind links. For blind SSRF/XXE/RCE/deserialization the OOB callback IS the proof of that link — no further pivot needed to count it Confirmed.

7. Stop conditions

Halt and report immediately if you: gain access clearly beyond the agreed scope, risk data integrity or availability, hit real (non-test) user data, or trigger a destructive action. Report what happened; do not continue "to be sure".

8. Output

• Update every validated finding in its findings/<NN>-<slug>.md: set Validation: and fill the Validation result block (verdict, method, observed indicator, tester identity).
• Write a run summary to findings/VALIDATION-LOG.md: a per-finding table FINDING-ID | verdict | indicator | identity | notes, AND a per-chain table CHAIN-ID | links | chain verdict | failed handoff | notes, plus the scope/identity map used (placeholdered) and the date of the run.
• Hand off to sast-final-report: Confirmed findings drive the chain analysis; chain verdicts (Validated / Links-confirmed / Broken / Theoretical) set each chain's status in the report; False positives are excluded from the risk list but retained with rationale; Inconclusive findings are listed as "needs manual confirmation".

Rules

• English-only output.
• Never weaponize by default; existence proof is the deliverable.
• Never write live credentials/tokens into files — placeholders only.
• If not authorized or not in scope: stay static, validate nothing actively.