Overview
The Iron Law: No [CONFIRMED] without proof. A finding is a claim about real, demonstrated
impact — not a status code, a reflected string, or a hunch. This is the offensive equivalent of
test-driven development: the proof is the test, and the finding does not exist until it passes.
Violating the letter of this rule is violating its spirit.
The three tiers
[CONFIRMED]— impact demonstrated AND grounded in an evidence artifact that exists on disk.[POSSIBLE]— reachable but the class proof bar is not yet met. Keep digging; do not report as real.[INFO]— true but no security impact at the claimed severity.
The proof bar (per class)
A status code is not impact. See skills/references/finding-evidence-standards.md:
SSRF needs the internal response; IDOR needs another principal's data; RCE needs command output;
XSS needs script execution; open redirect needs an external destination.
Required mechanical gate
Before any finding is recorded or reported:
- Set the structured proof signal and run
python skills/vulnerability-analysis/scripts/validate_findings.py --findings f.json --evidence ./evidence— it rejects ungrounded findings and per-class false positives. - Pass it through the REQUIRED
finding-validatoragent (PASS / KILL / DOWNGRADE). - Only a
[CONFIRMED]survivor goes in the report. Severity must match what was demonstrated (CVSS honest).
See skills/references/finding-validation-runtime.md for the 7-question gate.
Read-first, never name-guess
If a function calls another, read the callee — do not infer what it does from its name.
sanitize(), is_safe(), validate_input() are exactly where vulnerabilities hide; a name is a
claim by the author, not evidence. The same applies to a config key, a decorator, or a CVE title:
open the thing before you reason about it. An unread dependency in a data-flow claim is a hole.
Quote-grounded confidence tiers
Every claim in a finding carries a confidence grounded in what you can quote, not in how it feels:
- High — a direct quote from the artifact (the exact source line, the response body, the decompiled instruction) supports the claim.
- Medium — an explicitly stated assumption bridges a gap you could not directly observe. State the assumption; do not hide it.
- Low — an inference you are flagging as unverified. Acceptable to record, never to report as fact.
This is orthogonal to the [CONFIRMED]/[POSSIBLE]/[INFO] tier (which is about impact); confidence
is about how well-grounded the claim is. A High-confidence claim of a Low-impact bug is still Low.
Red Flags — STOP, downgrade to [POSSIBLE]
- "I'm sure it's exploitable" (but haven't shown impact)
- "The payload reflected, so it's XSS" / "I got a 200, so it works"
- "The DNS callback fired" (SSRF with no internal response)
- "I changed the id and got data" (but it was my own — self-IDOR)
- "It probably works on a real target" (default-deployment unproven)
All of these mean: it is [POSSIBLE], not [CONFIRMED]. Get the evidence.
Rationalizations
| Excuse | Reality |
|---|---|
| "Pattern-matched, clearly vulnerable" | Pattern ≠ exploit. Demonstrate impact or it's POSSIBLE. |
| "I'll attach evidence later" | No artifact on disk = ungrounded = REJECTED now. |
| "Blind RCE counts" | No output / no OOB confirmation = POSSIBLE, not CONFIRMED. |
| "Severity is obviously Critical" | CVSS must reflect demonstrated impact, not the worst case. |
| "The validator is overkill here" | Untested findings are how false positives ship. Run it. |
"The function is called sanitize, so it's safe" |
A name is the author's claim, not proof. Read the callee. |
| "The solver timed out, so it's not exploitable" | A tool limit is feasibility:null (manual), never false. |
A short list of CONFIRMED findings beats a long list of POSSIBLEs. Killing a false positive is success.