redteam-mindset
The redteam-mindset skill recalibrates Claude's approach to offensive security engagements by enforcing red-team priorities (access and impact) rather than bug-bounty or WAPT priorities (vulnerability discovery and compliance). Use this at the start of any adversary-emulation, assume-breach, or red-team scope engagement, and again when facing blockers or considering stopping before access is achieved. Do not use for bug bounties or compliance audits, which require different decision-making discipline.
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/elementalsouls/Claude-BugHunter /tmp/redteam-mindset && cp -r /tmp/redteam-mindset/skills/redteam-mindset ~/.claude/skills/redteam-mindsetSKILL.md
## When to use this skill
Trigger when:
- Engagement scope says "red team", "adversary emulation", "assume breach", "TIBER-style"
- You're tempted to retract a finding because reproducibility failed once
- You're tempted to call a defense "working as intended" instead of probing further
- You hit a blocker (captcha, rate limit, WAF, CA-block, lockout) and consider stopping
- You're about to spend time on IDOR/CSRF/XSS instead of access-yielding bugs
- You found a vuln on app A and there are sister apps B, C, D you haven't touched
DO NOT use for:
- Bug bounty programs (use bug-bounty skill — different scope rules)
- WAPT/PCI-style assessments (use OWASP-aligned skills)
- Pure compliance audits
---
## The one-line summary
**Red team scope = "gain access, prove impact". Bug bounty / WAPT scope = "find a bug, write a report".**
These produce DIFFERENT decisions at every blocker. Internalize the difference before starting.
---
## DO NOT STOP — primary directive (read this twice)
The 9 corrections below are nuance. THIS is the core. If you only retain one thing from this skill, retain this.
### Authorization given at engagement start covers the entire engagement.
Do not insert mid-engagement permission gates. If the user chose a mode at the start ("full engagement", "Option D", "go deep", "test these assets") that authorization stands until the engagement window expires or the user explicitly revokes it. **`AskUserQuestion` mid-loop after the user already chose a path is a stall, not a check.**
### Discipline rules are about correctness of FINDINGS, not throttling of EFFORT.
Read this twice. The bundle's discipline rules — OOB-Or-It-Didn't-Happen, Marker Discipline, Body-Diff, Pre-Severity Gate, Server-Policy-vs-State, Statistical Sampling — all answer one question: *"is this signal actually a finding?"*. **None of them answer the question *"should I send the next probe?"*** The answer to that second question is always *yes*, unless scope is exhausted or the user said stop.
### "Stop at PoC" means stop ESCALATING, not stop TESTING.
When you confirm impact on bug class X, don't keep escalating class X (no need to pivot from `id=1` IDOR to dumping the whole user table). But classes Y and Z have not been tested yet. Run Y. Then Z. Then the rest of the Pattern Library.
### Marker Discipline ≠ "one probe per surface."
Marker Discipline is about WHICH payloads to use (synthetic, identifiable, recoverable) — never about HOW MANY. A hardened target needs MORE marker-discipline probes than a soft one, not fewer. If the bundle's `hunt-sqli` Pattern Library lists 12 SQLi classes, you run 12 marker-discipline probes per parameter, not 1.
### Self-throttling anti-patterns — flag immediately if you catch yourself doing any of these
These all came out of a real engagement (authorized-engagement revalidation, 2026-05-17) where this skill *existed* and was *loaded* and the operator still self-throttled. The lesson is to make the failure modes explicit:
1. **Asking "want me to continue?" mid-run** after the user already chose Option D / full engagement / "go deep". The answer they gave at start IS the answer.
2. **Stopping at first-class-returning-401/403.** The bundle has ≥12 auth-bypass classes (header tricks, method tampering, parameter pollution, JSON parser confusion, race on session create, mass-assignment on optional fields, X-Forwarded-Host SSRF in SAML callback, alg=none JWT, audience confusion, scope claim manipulation, refresh-token replay, device-code flow). Run them all per surface.
3. **"Interesting constant token, not chased."** If you see a token, hash, ID, or fingerprint that's constant across what should be varying responses, that's a *lead*, not an *artifact*. `GET` it. Decode it. Pass it back. A `view.php?view=<constant-md5>` redirect is a session/auth/error-key signal, not noise.
4. **Reading robots.txt for cross-template signals and NOT READING the Disallow lines.** A 469-line robots.txt is a developer-curated map of every path they don't want public. Every Disallow line is a probe target.
5. **Treating soft-404 as "noted."** A 37 KB body inside a 404 status is leaking the home page or worse. Read it. Grep it. Diff it against the home page.
6. **"OpenAPI exposed → finding logged"** with only 4 of N endpoints probed. Every endpoint × every relevant test class. The OpenAPI spec is the attack-surface map handed to you; not running it is throwing away a free recon.
7. **"APK retest deferred — needs tooling."** `brew install jadx`, apkpure direct download, `apk-redteam-pipeline` already documents the flow. Five minutes of setup, not "another session."
8. **Volume framed as a problem.** For an authorized engagement, 3,000 well-tagged requests through Burp is normal cadence. Bug-bounty hunters at full pace exceed that per *hour*. The question to ask is *"have I run every test class on every live surface,"* not *"have I sent too many requests."*
9. **Inserting `AskUserQuestion` at any decision point inside an active engagement loop.** If the user picked a mode at start, that mode is in effect until revoked. Choosing operationally between e.g. SAML acs raw POST vs SAML acs replay is a *technical* decision the operator can make and document — it does not require user pre-approval.
10. **Skill-gap-as-stop-condition.** "No `hunt-zoho` skill exists, so I logged a v1.1 gap and moved on." NO. If a hunt-* skill doesn't exist for a discovered tech stack, do the same work *manually* using the vendor's public check matrix. Log the gap in v1.1 roadmap *and* run the checks now.
### Real-engagement cadence — what a complete sweep per live host actually looks like
Per live host, before declaring the host complete:
- Top-100 path probe (admin, api, login, /.git, /.env, server-status, swagger, openapi.json, /docs, /actuator, /healthz, /metrics, /debug, /trace, /env, /heapdump, /threaddump, robots.txt, sitemap.xml, /.well-known/*, common-CMS-paths per fingerprint)
- robots.txt content **readEnd-to-end Android APK red-team pipeline — automated APK acquisition (Play Store + apkpure + apkmirror fallback), jadx decompilation, secret/URL/JWT/Firebase grep, pinned-cert extraction, exported-component enumeration, Frida runtime instrumentation templates, intent-injection probes. Built from an authorized external red-team engagement where 7 APKs were pulled manually, 4 download attempts truncated, and a hardcoded JWT + 30 internal API endpoints were recovered from one of the apps. Use when target has a mobile app catalogue (Play Store developer page), when you find an APK URL hosted on a web server, or when post-recon mentions "mobile app" in scope.
Run autonomous hunt loop on a target — scope check → recon → rank surface → hunt → validate → report with configurable checkpoints. Usage: /autopilot target.com [--paranoid|--normal|--yolo]
Local-tooling companion to the bug-bounty orchestrator — carries the SAME complete bug-bounty workflow, but reach for THIS variant when you also need to resolve where tools, wordlists, and clones are installed on the local machine (jhaddix, SecLists, trufflehog, ffuf, dalfox, ghauri); for pure orchestration/routing use the bug-bounty skill. Workflow it covers — recon (subdomain enumeration, asset discovery, fingerprinting, HackerOne scope, source code audit), pre-hunt learning (disclosed reports, tech stack research, mind maps, threat modeling), vulnerability hunting (IDOR, SSRF, XSS, auth bypass, CSRF, race conditions, SQLi, XXE, file upload, business logic, GraphQL, HTTP smuggling, cache poisoning, OAuth, timing side-channels, OIDC, SSTI, subdomain takeover, cloud misconfig, ATO chains, agentic AI), LLM/AI security testing (chatbot IDOR, prompt injection, indirect injection, ASCII smuggling, exfil channels, RCE via code tools, system prompt extraction, ASI01-ASI10), A-to-B bug chaining (IDOR→auth bypass, SSRF→cloud metadata, XSS→ATO, open redirect→OAuth theft, S3→bundle→secret→OAuth), bypass tables (SSRF IP bypass, open redirect bypass, file upload bypass), language-specific grep (JS prototype pollution, Python pickle, PHP type juggling, Go template.HTML, Ruby YAML.load, Rust unwrap), and reporting (7-Question Gate, 4 validation gates, human-tone writing, templates by vuln class, CVSS 3.1, PoC generation, always-rejected list, conditional chain table, submission checklist). Use when you need the local install path of a tool / wordlist / clone for a hunt, or as the full-workflow variant when operating from this local toolkit; for general routing use the bug-bounty skill. 中文触发词：漏洞赏金、安全测试、渗透测试、漏洞挖掘、信息收集、子域名枚举、XSS测试、SQL注入、SSRF、安全审计、漏洞报告
Use at the START of any bug bounty hunting session, when switching targets, or when feeling lost about what to do next. Master orchestrator that combines the 5-phase non-linear hunting workflow with the critical thinking framework (developer psychology, anomaly detection, What-If experiments). Routes to all other skills based on current hunting phase. Also use when asking "what should I do next" or "where am I in the process.
Complete bug bounty workflow — recon (subdomain enumeration, asset discovery, fingerprinting, HackerOne scope, source code audit), pre-hunt learning (disclosed reports, tech stack research, mind maps, threat modeling), vulnerability hunting (IDOR, SSRF, XSS, auth bypass, CSRF, race conditions, SQLi, XXE, file upload, business logic, GraphQL, HTTP smuggling, cache poisoning, OAuth, timing side-channels, OIDC, SSTI, subdomain takeover, cloud misconfig, ATO chains, agentic AI), LLM/AI security testing (chatbot IDOR, prompt injection, indirect injection, ASCII smuggling, exfil channels, RCE via code tools, system prompt extraction, ASI01-ASI10), A-to-B bug chaining (IDOR→auth bypass, SSRF→cloud metadata, XSS→ATO, open redirect→OAuth theft, S3→bundle→secret→OAuth), bypass tables (SSRF IP bypass, open redirect bypass, file upload bypass), language-specific grep (JS prototype pollution, Python pickle, PHP type juggling, Go template.HTML, Ruby YAML.load, Rust unwrap), and reporting (7-Question Gate, 4 validation gates, human-tone writing, templates by vuln class, CVSS 3.1, PoC generation, always-rejected list, conditional chain table, submission checklist). Use for ANY bug bounty task — starting a new target, doing recon, hunting specific vulns, auditing source code, testing AI features, validating findings, or writing reports. 中文触发词：漏洞赏金、安全测试、渗透测试、漏洞挖掘、信息收集、子域名枚举、XSS测试、SQL注入、SSRF、安全审计、漏洞报告
Bugcrowd-specific reporting tactics complementing report-writing: VRT category search-and-fallback strategy when no exact match exists, manual severity override when VRT defaults underrate impact, severity-request paragraph as first body section, OOS-clause rebuttal templates (rate limiting on auth-flow endpoints, debug-info framing, user-enumeration with sensitive PII, theoretical-issue counter), chained-finding cross-reference patterns, target selection for QA-vs-prod programs, researcher-side hygiene (Bugcrowdninja email alias, account state restoration, friendly-tester posture). Use when filing a Bugcrowd submission, when VRT default seems wrong, when triager closes as OOS or downgrades severity, when chaining linked submissions, or when scope distinguishes production from QA. Pairs with report-writing and triage-validation.
Build an exploit chain — given bug A, finds B and C to combine for higher severity and payout. Knows common chain patterns: IDOR→ATO, SSRF→cloud metadata, XSS→ATO, open redirect→OAuth theft, S3→bundle→secret→OAuth. Usage: /chain
Cloud IAM red-team attack chain across AWS, Azure, GCP — focused on EXTERNAL exploitation paths and post-credential-discovery privilege analysis. Covers IAM enumeration (aws iam, az role, gcloud iam), STS/AssumeRole chaining, Azure Managed Identity abuse (via SSRF/leak), GCP service account JSON abuse, IMDSv1/v2 attacks via SSRF, K8s ServiceAccount token privilege analysis once held (token discovery / cluster exposure is owned by hunt-k8s), role-trust-policy confused-deputy, cross-account assume-role enumeration, IAM privilege escalation patterns (24+ AWS, 8+ Azure, 6+ GCP), and AWS Cognito Identity Pool unauthenticated-role attack chain (GetId → GetCredentialsForIdentity → IAM role abuse). Built for the case where recon yields a credential (key, JSON, token) and you need to know what it grants and how to escalate. Use when an AWS key / Azure secret / GCP service account JSON / K8s SA token surfaces from a code repo, JS bundle, APK, breach corpus, or SSRF chain.