hunt-spa-api skill
Discover a single-page-app's hidden backend API from its public JS bundle, then test that API for broken access control / missing authentication. One of the highest-yield web plays in modern recon — SPAs ship their entire backend route map to the browser, and the API behind them is frequently missing the auth middleware the login page implies. Built from an authorized engagement where this play found an unauthenticated financial API that an ASM scan reporting hundreds of "Criticals" completely missed. Use whenever a target serves a JS-heavy SPA (React/Vue/Angular/Next), an "app"/"console"/"dashboard"/"portal" subdomain, or any `*api*` host shows up in recon. Leaked build artifacts (source maps / .env / .git / asset-manifest) are owned by hunt-source-leak; API version-inventory and behavioral diffing by hunt-shadow-api; this skill owns mapping a live SPA's backend routes from its JS bundle and testing them for broken access control / missing auth.
Is the hunt-spa-api skill safe?
Clean: nothing in its files matched our rules. We read 1 file in the folder on 2026-09-28.
No findings.
Install the hunt-spa-api skill
A skill is a folder. Copy it into your agent's skills folder and the agent loads it when the task matches its description.
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/elementalsouls/Claude-BugHunter.git /tmp/Claude-BugHunter mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills cp -r /tmp/Claude-BugHunter/skills/hunt-spa-api ~/.claude/skills/hunt-spa-api
In the Claude apps, zip the folder and upload it from the Skills settings. The folder on GitHub
The instructions your agent would load
SKILL.md as published, without the frontmatter. Read it on GitHub
When to use this skill
Trigger when:
- A target host returns a tiny HTML shell + big /static/js/.js or /next/static/* bundles (React/Vue/Angular/Next/Svelte SPA)
- You see a subdomain named console, app, dashboard, portal, admin, panel, manage, internal
- Recon surfaces any api, -api, api.* host
- A login page is OAuth/SSO-gated (the frontend auth tells you nothing about whether the API enforces auth)
The core insight: a SPA is a client to a backend API, and it ships the full map of that API — hosts, routes, sometimes keys — to anyone who views source. The login page being protected says nothing about whether the API behind it checks tokens. Auth is frequently enforced on the gateway/login and missing on a route group of the API.
DO NOT skip this because "the app needs login" — that's exactly when this pays off.
The play (5 steps)
1. Pull the shell + enumerate the bundles
curl -s https://console.target.com/ -o index.html
# React/CRA:
grep -oE '/static/js/[^"]+\.js' index.html
# Next.js:
grep -oE '/_next/static/[^"]+\.js' index.html
# generic:
grep -oiE 'src="[^"]+\.js[^"]*"' index.htmlDownload every bundle (they can be multi-MB — that's fine, it's all route data):
mkdir bundles
for j in $(grep -oE '/static/js/[^"]+\.js' index.html | sort -u); do
curl -s "https://console.target.com$j" -o "bundles/$(echo "$j"|tr '/' '_')"
done2. Harvest API hosts, routes, and secrets from the bundles
B=bundles/*.js
# Backend API hosts (incl. dev/beta/staging variants — often weaker auth)
grep -ohiE 'https://[a-z0-9.-]*(api|console|backend|service)[a-z0-9.-]*\.target\.com[a-z0-9/_-]*' $B | sort -u
# Versioned API base paths
grep -ohiE '/api/v[0-9]+/?' $B | sort -u
# Route literals — minified bundles store routes as STRING segments, not full URLs.
# Grep for quoted "resource/action" strings:
grep -ohiE '"[a-z0-9_-]+/[a-z0-9_/-]+"' $B | tr -d '"' \
| grep -iE '(login|user|account|order|billing|invoice|payment|deal|report|token|otp|password|reset|admin|profile|auth|upload|export|role|permission|dashboard|wallet|finance|sales)' | sort -u
# Secrets (validate before trusting — most AIza keys are Maps/analytics, not Auth)
grep -ohiE '(AIza[0-9A-Za-z_-]{35}|AKIA[0-9A-Z]{16}|sk_live_[0-9A-Za-z]+|eyJ[A-Za-z0-9_-]{10,}\.[A-Za-z0-9_-]{10,}|apiKey["'"'"']?\s*[:=]\s*["'"'"'][^"'"'"']+)' $B | sort -uNote: minifiers store routes as concatenated string segments (e.g. "account/payment/list"), NOT full /api/v2/... URLs — so a naive /api/v grep returns nothing. Grep for the resource-word route strings** and prepend the base yourself.
Lazy-loaded (async) chunks — don't stop at HTML-referenced bundles. CRA/webpack SPAs reference only runtime+main+vendor in index.html; numbered async route chunks are named inside main.js's chunk map and loaded at runtime, so grepping only /static/js/*.js from the shell truncates route coverage to eager chunks.
grep -oE '[0-9]+:"[a-f0-9]+"' bundles/*main*.js # {chunkId:"hash"} pairs
# reconstruct /static/js/<id>.<hash>.chunk.js, download each, re-run route/host/secret harvest
# asset-manifest.json (if present) lists them all -> hunt-source-leak3. Establish a CONTROL — find an endpoint that IS gated
Before declaring anything vulnerable, send an unauthenticated request to an endpoint you expect to be protected, and capture what correct rejection looks like:
curl -s -X POST https://api.target.com/api/users -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{}'
# secure → {"error":"Missing or invalid authorization header"} or HTTP 401This is your differential. A sibling API (e.g. a second API host, or a different route group on the same host) is the ideal control — same stack, so a different response = real authz gap, not a quirk.
4. Test each route family UNAUTHENTICATED, both methods
For every discovered route, send it with no Authorization header and compare to the control:
for r in <routes>; do
curl -s -o /tmp/r -w "[%{http_code}] $r\n" -X POST -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{}' "https://api.target.com/api/v2/$r"
doneInterpret:
- 401/"Missing authorization" → gated (correct). Move on.
- 200 with data → unauthenticated data exposure. Finding.
- 400 "field X is mandatory" → the route processed your request and reached business-logic validation without an auth check → auth bypass; supply the field minimally to confirm.
- 200 + verbose DB/stack error (e.g. PROCEDURE dbx.spy does not exist) → reached the data layer unauthenticated; also a SQLi-surface signal.
- Mandatory fields named like isadmin / isinternal / requestedby / roleid / accounttype → authorization derived from client-supplied parameters** — set the privilege flag and you self-elevate. Critical-class.
5. Pivot & prove (minimally)
- IDs returned by one endpoint (accountid, orderid, dealid) are the keys the other* endpoints consume — they prove the whole router is reachable, not just one route.
- Test dev-/beta-/staging- API variants — they frequently have weaker/disabled auth.
- Check the response headers: Access-Control-Allow-Origin: * compounds the issue (any web origin reads it from a victim's browser).
- STOP at minimum-necessary proof. A handful of records (or a totalCount) confirms the missing check. Do NOT enumerate the table — see redteam-mindset data-minimization boundary. The finding is the absent auth, not the data volume.
What "the API behind the SSO login" really means
A common, dangerous architecture:
- console.target.com (the SPA) → login is Entra/Okta/Google OAuth (looks airtight).
- api.target.com (the backend) → some route groups enforce the bearer token, some route groups forgot the middleware.
The frontend login is theatre if the API doesn't independently validate the token on every route. Always test the API directly, bare, regardless of how locked-down the login UI is.
Anti-patterns
- "The app requires login, so the API must be protected." No — test the API directly, unauthenticated. The whole point.
- "Minified bundle, can't read it." You don't need to read it — grep it for hosts/routes/secrets. 5 minutes.
- "/api/v1/foo returned 404, so no API here." Wrong base or wrong method. Try /api/, /api/v2/, POST not GET, and the exact route strings from the bundle (Express's 404 echoes the path — use it to calibrate).
- "AIza key found → critical secret." Validate first — most are Maps/analytics keys (CONFIGURATIONNOTFOUND on identitytoolkit = not Auth-enabled). Don't over-claim.
- Dumping the whole dataset once you get a 200. Stop at PoC. (redteam-mindset.)
- Account-creation / write endpoints as "proof". Read endpoints prove the auth gap without creating state. Never POST a create/signup/upload to "demonstrate" — that's a destructive write needing explicit per-action authorization.
Related Skills & Chains
- hunt-api-misconfig — once the API is mapped, run the broader misconfig matrix (method tampering, mass assignment, JWT alg confusion) per route.
- hunt-idor — the accountid/orderid pivots feed straight into IDOR testing across discovered routes.
- hunt-source-leak — sourcemaps (*.js.map) reconstruct original source for deeper route/secret extraction; same harvesting muscle.
- hunt-nextjs — for Next.js targets, layer the middleware-bypass (x-middleware-subrequest) and /_next/data route tests on top of this.
- redteam-mindset — the data-minimization boundary governs step 5: prove the missing check, don't exfiltrate the table.
- recon-scope-triage — verify the API host actually belongs to the target before testing (don't pop a same-named third party's API).
More skills from elementalsouls/Claude-BugHunter
- Aapk-redteam-pipelineEnd-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.
- Fbb-local-toolkitLocal-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
- Abb-methodologyUse 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."
- Fbug-bountyComplete 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
- Abugcrowd-reportingBugcrowd-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.
- Acloud-iam-deepCloud 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.
- Centerprise-vpn-attackExternal SSL VPN / remote-access appliance attack matrix — Cisco ASA/AnyConnect, Fortinet FortiGate/FortiOS, Citrix NetScaler/ADC, Palo Alto GlobalProtect, Pulse Secure / Ivanti Connect Secure, SonicWall, F5 Big-IP. Covers version fingerprinting, CVE matrix (2018-2026), AAA backend identification, default credentials, configuration-disclosure paths, pre-auth RCE/SSRF/path-traversal exploits where applicable. Built from authorized-engagement Cisco ASA testing plus 2024-2026 enterprise VPN CVE landscape. Use whenever the target's perimeter exposes any SSL VPN appliance or remote-access gateway — these are the most common initial-access points in 2024-2026 actor TTPs.
- Aevidence-hygieneEvidence-capture and PoC-redaction discipline for bug-bounty submissions: cookie redaction protocol (which fields to mask, Preview annotation / Burp panel hiding / DevTools workflow), PII black-bar discipline (what to mask in other-user data — names, emails, phones, faces — vs what is safe to leave — usernames, trace IDs, request bodies), HAR file sanitization (jq filters for Cookie/Set-Cookie/Authorization headers), Burp Repeater/Intruder screenshot hygiene (hide request body, show only Results table for rate-limit attacks), Chrome DevTools Console PoC patterns (credentials include so cookies are not echoed, labeled console.log), screenshot capture order, filename conventions, post-submission rotation hygiene. Use BEFORE any PoC screenshot, BEFORE attaching a HAR, or whenever preparing evidence with session cookies or other-user PII. Pairs with bugcrowd-reporting and report-writing.
- Ahunt-api-misconfigHunt API security misconfiguration — mass assignment, prototype pollution, HTTP verb tampering. Mass assignment: send {is_admin:true, role:admin, verified:true} on profile/account/reset endpoints — server blindly applies. JWT signature/crypto forging (alg:none, key confusion, kid/jku) is owned by hunt-jwt-crypto; this skill covers only non-crypto JWT handling. Prototype pollution: __proto__ injection in JSON merge / Object.assign / lodash _.merge → polluted prototype reaches sink (RCE in Node, XSS in browser). HTTP verb: GET-bypass-CSRF, X-HTTP-Method-Override, TRACE enabled. Detection: API responses with extra fields, JWTs in headers (decode at jwt.io). CORS misconfiguration (reflect-any-origin, null origin, subdomain-regex bypass, postMessage) is owned by hunt-cors. Use when hunting API misconfigs, mass-assignment, prototype pollution (JWT crypto → hunt-jwt-crypto).
- Ahunt-aspnetHunt ASP.NET-specific surface — ViewState deserialization (signed-only vs encrypted), machineKey recovery, dual-parser MAC-bypass anti-pattern, request-validator bypass, trace.axd/elmah.axd disclosure, load-balanced ViewState cross-node failures, SafeControl enumeration via reflection, customErrors mode=Off stack-trace leaks, classic Webforms .aspx/.asmx/.svc surface. Built for ASP.NET Webforms + WCF + SharePoint farms.
- Ahunt-atoHunt account takeover taxonomy — 9 distinct paths to ATO, plus chains. Paths: (1) password reset flaws (host-header injection redirects token, predictable/numeric token, Referer leak, no-expiry/reuse), (2) email change without re-auth, (3) OAuth account-link CSRF, (4) MFA bypass (per hunt-mfa-bypass), (5) session fixation, (6) JWT manipulation (forge token to another identity; crypto details → hunt-jwt-crypto), (7) password change without step-up (chain with login timing/length oracle), (8) social-recovery / security-question brute-force, (9) SSO subdomain takeover at OAuth redirect_uri. Chains: cookie theft + password oracle + no step-up = persistent ATO; lax redirect_uri = auth-code theft; dangling-CNAME takeover at redirect_uri = ATO. Validate: demonstrate real takeover of test account B from attacker A's session; OOB/Collaborator confirm blind token-leak steps. Use when hunting ATO chains, testing password reset / email change / MFA / OAuth / session / JWT, or chaining primitives toward Critical.
- Ahunt-auth-bypassHunting skill for auth bypass vulnerabilities. Built from 12 public bug bounty reports across SAML XSW / parser-differential (GitHub Enterprise CVE-2025-25291/25292), SAML signature stripping (Uber, Rocket.Chat, samlify CVE-2025-47949), SAML domain enforcement bypass via control characters (HackerOne 2024), partner-portal cross-IdP assertion reuse (Slack), WordPress XMLRPC bypassing SSO (Uber), JWT alg-confusion HS256/RS256 (Jitsi), JWT signature-validation skip (Linktree, Newspack), and token-audience confusion (Argo CD CVE-2023-22482). For standalone JWT signature/crypto forging (alg:none, key confusion, kid/jku) see hunt-jwt-crypto; this skill covers JWT only inside SSO/SAML/token-trust bypass chains. SAML assertion-layer attacks (XSW, comment injection, signature stripping, XXE-in-assertion) are owned by hunt-saml; this skill owns the broader cross-protocol auth-bypass taxonomy. Use when hunting auth bypass — see the Legacy-Protocol Matrix for branded-UI vs legacy-endpoint patterns.