This skill should be used when the user asks to “analyze code for security issues”, “check for OWASP vulnerabilities”, “review code against CWE Top 25”, “find injection…
Follow these steps when conducting a manual security code review:
Identify the attack surface. Determine entry points: API endpoints, message handlers, file parsers, user-facing forms. Read route definitions and controller registrations to build a map.
Trace data flows from sources to sinks. Follow untrusted input (HTTP parameters, headers, request bodies, file uploads, external API responses) through all transformations to dangerous operations (database queries, command execution, HTML rendering, file system access).
Check trust boundary crossings. At every point where data crosses a trust boundary (client→server, service→service, user input→database), verify that validation, authentication, and authorization are enforced.
Apply framework checklists. Consult references/framework-checklists.md for OWASP Web/API/Mobile Top 10 and CWE Top 25. Check each applicable category against the code under review.
Adopt an adversarial mindset. Form a hypothesis (e.g., “I can bypass SSO”, “I can access another user’s vault”) and work backwards to determine what conditions would make it exploitable.
Map findings to CWE IDs. Every finding must include the specific CWE identifier, the code location, and the data flow that makes it exploitable.
Classify by practical exploitability. Distinguish between practically exploitable vulnerabilities and theoretical risks. Prioritize accordingly but document both.
The most frequently encountered categories across Bitwarden’s stack:
Injection (CWE-89, CWE-78, CWE-77) — Unsanitized input reaching SQL queries, OS commands, or LDAP queries. Always use parameterized queries and avoid string concatenation.
Broken Access Control (CWE-862, CWE-287, CWE-306) — Missing authorization checks, IDOR, privilege escalation. Verify per-object ownership checks and role enforcement at every layer.
XSS (CWE-79) — User input rendered in HTML without encoding. In Angular, avoid innerHTML and bypassSecurityTrust* with untrusted content.
SSRF (CWE-918) — User-controlled URLs in server-side requests. Validate against host allowlists.
Insecure Deserialization (CWE-502) — Type-handling enabled on untrusted input. Avoid TypeNameHandling.All in JSON.NET.
Path Traversal (CWE-22) — User-supplied paths reaching file system operations. Canonicalize and validate against a base directory.
Cryptographic Failures — Weak algorithms, hardcoded keys, predictable IVs. See the reviewing-security-architecture skill for approved algorithms.
For complete framework checklists (all OWASP and CWE categories), consult references/framework-checklists.md.
For CORRECT/WRONG code examples in C#, TypeScript, and SQL, consult references/vulnerability-patterns.md.
Adopt an adversarial mindset during security code review — this differs from regular code review which seeks to strengthen code.
How to think adversarially:
Create a hypothesis — e.g., “I can bypass SSO”, “I can access another user’s vault”, “I can escalate from member to admin”
Work backwards — What conditions would need to be true for the attack to succeed? Can those conditions be fabricated?
Question assumptions — Is that authorization check always reached? What happens if the middleware fails? What if the token is malformed but not invalid?
Consider failure modes — What happens when things fail? Do they fail open (insecure) or fail closed (secure)?
Authentication before authorization. Always verify the user is who they claim to be before checking what they’re allowed to do. Never skip auth checks in “internal” endpoints.
Validate at trust boundaries. Every point where data crosses a trust boundary (client→server, service→service, user input→database) must validate. Never trust client-side validation alone.
Map findings to CWE IDs. Every finding must include a specific CWE identifier with evidence: the code location and the data flow that makes it exploitable.
Practical over theoretical. Distinguish between vulnerabilities that are practically exploitable in this system vs. theoretical risks. Prioritize accordingly but document both.
Check the whole chain. A vulnerability isn’t just the sink — trace from the source (user input) through all transformations to the sink (dangerous operation). If the chain is broken by sanitization, it’s not exploitable.
For detailed checklists and code examples, consult:
references/framework-checklists.md — OWASP Web Top 10, API Top 10, Mobile Top 10 (2024), CWE Top 25 lookup tables
references/vulnerability-patterns.md — CORRECT/WRONG code examples for C#/.NET, TypeScript/Angular, and SQL
About this skill
Trigger
This skill should be used when the user asks to "analyze code for security issues", "check for OWASP vulnerabilities", "review code against CWE Top 25", "find injection vulnerabilities", "do a security code review", or needs manual security analysis against OWASP Top 10, API Top 10, Mobile Top 10, or CWE/SANS frameworks.
The verbatim description from this skill’s front matter — the string an agent matches on to decide whether to load it.
Other — the text of every skill is reproduced unmodified, frontmatter included, under the upstream licence.
Discovery
65 skills found by walking the repository tree for SKILL.md, not by matching a directory convention. 13 distinct layouts observed: plugins/bitwarden-atlassian-tools/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/bitwarden-code-review/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/bitwarden-delivery-tools/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/bitwarden-design-tools/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/bitwarden-designer/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/bitwarden-devops-engineer/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/bitwarden-product-analyst/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/bitwarden-security-engineer/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/bitwarden-shepherd/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/bitwarden-tech-lead/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/bitwarden-testing-tools/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/claude-config-validator/skills/*/SKILL.md, plugins/claude-retrospective/skills/*/SKILL.md.
Issue colours
Resolved from a deterministic hash of the owner name. Two accent tones are generated per issue and each is proven against its own ground before it ships: a single accent that passes AA on both light and dark paper is arithmetically impossible.
Heading repairs
None needed in this skill: the outline was already valid.
Spec compliance
10 editorial notes across 5 of 65 skills. They are printed in the margin of each skill rather than as errors here.
Images inside a skill come from the upstream repository. Where the author gave no alternative text we mark the image decorative rather than inventing a description — a plausible caption we made up is worse than none for the reader who depends on it.
Marketplace
A plugin manifest is published at .claude-plugin/marketplace.json by Bitwarden, declaring 16 plugins. It is read for editorial metadata only — never as the skill index, which is always the repository tree.
Signal
Install counts come from skills.sh. They measure downloads, not quality, and an unranked repository is not an unread one.
Agent surfaces
The whole issue is available as one markdown document at /bitwarden/ai-plugins.md, and each skill at its own .md URL.
Publication
Set by Skills Docs from the source repository. Body text is Literata at the reader’s chosen size and measure; code is Geist Mono. Nothing on this page was written by us except this paragraph.
Appendix 38.1–38.2
2 files · 9 KB
Everything this skill ships beside its prose. All of it is set here, as subchapters of skill 38.
ReferencesMarkdown · 2 files
Documentation the agent loads on demand, rather than up front.