hunt-shadow-api

⚠️ AUTHORIZED USE ONLY This skill is for educational purposes or authorized security assessments only. You must have explicit, written permission from the system owner before using this tool. Misuse of this tool is illegal and strictly prohibited.

Mandatory confirmation gate Before running any command that probes, exploits, changes, persists on, extracts data from, or attempts credential access against a target:

1. Ask the user to state the exact target URL, IP, account, or resource.
2. Ask the user to confirm written authorization and the permitted scope.
3. Show the exact command(s) and explain their expected effect.
4. Wait for explicit confirmation in the current conversation.

Without that confirmation, remain read-only and provide defensive guidance only. Prefer a sandbox, disposable VM, or controlled lab.

OWASP API9 — Improper Inventory Management (Shadow / Zombie APIs)

As an API evolves, old versions and internal/staging routes routinely stay reachable without receiving the same security fixes as the current version — because nobody tracks that they still exist. The bug is rarely in one endpoint; it's in the delta between what an old version enforces and what the current version enforces on the same operation.

When to use

Trigger when:

• Versioned paths are visible (/v1/, /v2/, /api/2023-01-01/) or Accept/X-API-Version headers are in play.
• A changelog, release notes, or deprecation notice references removed/old API behavior.
• A mobile APK/IPA (via apk-redteam-pipeline / ios-redteam-pipeline) hardcodes endpoints that look like an older backend version than the current web app calls.
• Multiple OpenAPI/Swagger specs are discoverable, or info.version in one spec implies others exist.

DO NOT use for single-version APIs with no version history — there's nothing to diff; go straight to hunt-api-misconfig for direct exploitation of the one surface that exists.

Stage 1 — Enumerate the Full Version Surface

# Path-based versioning
for v in v1 v2 v3 v4 beta alpha internal legacy old 2022-01-01 2023-01-01 2024-01-01; do
  curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code} /api/$v/\n" "https://$TARGET/api/$v/"
done

# Header-based versioning
curl -s -H "X-API-Version: 1" https://$TARGET/api/users
curl -s -H "Accept: application/vnd.company.v1+json" https://$TARGET/api/users

# Subdomain-based versioning
for sub in api api-v1 api-v2 apiv1 apiv2 legacy-api old-api internal-api staging-api; do
  curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code} $sub\n" "https://$sub.$TARGET/"
done

A 200/401/403 on an old version path (anything but 404/connection-refused) means the version is still live and worth carrying into Stage 3, even if it demands auth.

Stage 2 — Pull Every Reachable Spec, Not Just the Linked One

for path in openapi.json swagger.json v1/swagger.json v2/swagger.json v3/api-docs \
            api-docs.json swagger/v1/swagger.json .well-known/openapi.json; do
  curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code} /$path\n" "https://$TARGET/$path"
done

# Wayback Machine — a DEPRECATED version's spec often stays indexed after the live link is removed
curl -s "http://web.archive.org/cdx/search/cdx?url=$TARGET/*swagger*&output=json&collapse=urlkey"
curl -s "http://web.archive.org/cdx/search/cdx?url=$TARGET/*openapi*&output=json&collapse=urlkey"

When more than one spec resolves (a current one and an archived/old one), diff the endpoint inventories directly:

jq -r '.paths | keys[]' v1-swagger.json | sort > /tmp/v1_paths.txt
jq -r '.paths | keys[]' v2-swagger.json | sort > /tmp/v2_paths.txt
comm -23 /tmp/v1_paths.txt /tmp/v2_paths.txt   # in v1 only — candidates for "still live but forgotten"

For every path in that diff, confirm it's still reachable against the v1 base URL. A route documented only in the old spec that still returns something other than 404 is a zombie- endpoint candidate — carry it into Stage 3.

Stage 3 — Behavioral Diff Between Old and Current Version

For each operation that exists in both versions, compare security-relevant behavior, not response shape. Response shape differences are Informational; behavioral security regressions are the finding.

• Auth strength. Does the old version accept no token, an expired token, or a lower- privilege token that the current version rejects?

  curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer $EXPIRED_TOKEN" https://$TARGET/api/v1/users/me -w '\n%{http_code}\n'
  curl -s -H "Authorization: Bearer $EXPIRED_TOKEN" https://$TARGET/api/v2/users/me -w '\n%{http_code}\n'
  

• Rate limiting. Burst the same number of requests against both versions' equivalent endpoint; a missing 429 on the old version means rate-limiting was added later and never backported.
• Input validation. Send the identical injection/oversized/malformed payload to both; the old version accepting what the new one rejects means hardening happened forward-only — chain into whichever injection class the payload targets (hunt-sqli, hunt-idor, etc.).
• Field exposure. Does the old version's response body include fields — internal IDs, other users' data, internal notes, PII — that the current version has since redacted?

Stage 4 — Deprecated / Internal Routes Never Referenced by the Current UI

• Grep JS bundles for API calls no visible UI flow triggers (/internal/, /admin/, /debug/, /_internal/, /test/, /staging/) — reuse hunt-source-leak's JS-bundle grep patterns for this specifically.
• Check robots.txt / sitemap.xml for disallowed API paths — a self-inflicted disclosure.
• Mobile-app endpoint inventories (via apk-redteam-pipeline / ios-redteam-pipeline) very often reference an older backend version than the current web app calls. Treat every APK/IPA-sourced endpoint as a version-diff candidate against the live web API.

False-Positive Gate

• A version difference alone (different response shape, cosmetic field renaming) is Informational. The finding is a security-relevant regression — auth, rate-limit, or validation that got weaker going backward in version history.
• Confirm the old endpoint is not simply an alias/proxy to the current implementation before claiming a behavioral difference — send a payload that would actually behave differently under old vs. new logic, not just compare a version string in the response body.
• A 200 on a path that just serves a static "this API version is deprecated, use v2" message is not a finding — confirm the underlying operation still executes.

Severity Table

Related Skills & Chains

• hunt-api-misconfig — owns exploitation once a spec or endpoint is in hand (mass assignment, JWT attacks, OData, Swagger-chain attacks). This skill hands it a sharper target: "here's a zombie endpoint with weaker validation than the current one."
• hunt-subdomain — owns host/subdomain-level discovery (api-v1.target.com as its own host, potential takeover). This skill owns what happens once you're inside a given host's version surface.
• hunt-source-leak — JS-bundle grep for internal/undocumented calls; reused here specifically for version-diffing rather than secret extraction.
• apk-redteam-pipeline / ios-redteam-pipeline — mobile builds routinely hardcode an older API version; every mobile-sourced endpoint is a version-diff candidate.
• hunt-brute-force — a rate-limit regression found here is only a complete finding once chained to actual brute-forceable impact (login, OTP, enumeration).

When to Use

• You have explicit, written authorization to assess the target in scope, and the task matches this skill's vulnerability class or technique within a bug-bounty or penetration-test engagement.
• You need the recon, exploitation, or validation workflow described below — executed strictly inside the approved scope.

Limitations

• Authorized scope only: the confirmation gate above is mandatory before any probing, exploitation, or credential-access command.
• Docs-only import: upstream helper scripts, commands, engine, and research assets are not bundled; reinstall tooling from the source repo when needed.
• Validate every finding (see triage-validation) before reporting; report via report-writing. Prefer a sandbox, disposable VM, or controlled lab.

Example

# Read-only first step; confirm scope before anything active.
cat scope.txt  # target list from the authorized engagement brief

Adapted from elementalsouls/Claude-BugHunter (MIT); frontmatter, When to Use/Limitations, and safety boundaries added for upstream compliance. Docs-only import: executable helpers, commands, engine, and research assets not bundled.