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Firebase Security Rules Auditor

Firebase Security Rules Auditor Skill

Firebase's official red-team skill for auditing Firestore and Cloud Storage security rules — hunting privilege escalation, create/update bypasses and resource-exhaustion holes.

GitHub Docs

Install

Install with the skills CLI

One command for Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Gemini CLI, Windsurf and dozens of other agents. Needs Node.js; the skill is fetched straight from firebase/skills.

$ npx skills add firebase/skills --skill firebase-security-rules-auditor

Run it in a terminal. The CLI finds the agents installed on your machine, asks which ones to add the skill to, and whether to install it into the folder you ran it from or for all your projects.

Other ways to install

Copy the whole skill folder — SKILL.md and any scripts or references beside it — into ~/.claude/skills/firebase-security-rules-auditor/, where Claude Code picks it up in every project. Only git is needed.

tmp=$(mktemp -d) && \
  git clone --depth 1 --branch main https://github.com/firebase/skills.git "$tmp" && \
  mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills && \
  cp -R "$tmp"/skills/firebase-security-rules-auditor ~/.claude/skills/firebase-security-rules-auditor

No scripts or references next to it? Saving the SKILL.md alone as ~/.claude/skills/firebase-security-rules-auditor/SKILL.md works too.

Using another agent? Its personal skills folder
Codex
~/.agents/skills/
Cursor
~/.cursor/skills/
GitHub Copilot
~/.copilot/skills/
Gemini CLI
~/.gemini/skills/
Windsurf
~/.codeium/windsurf/skills/
OpenCode
~/.config/opencode/skills/

About

  • Adversarial red-team review rather than a style check
  • Detects create-then-update privilege escalation paths
  • Flags authorization that trusts request.resource.data
  • Treats missing size limits as a DoS risk
  • Checks type safety on every field
  • Separates hasOnly()/diff() field control from ownership checks

Firebase Security Rules fail in ways that read as secure. A rule set can look thorough and still let a user write a document that passes create, then mutate it into an admin record through update. This official Firebase skill puts the agent in an adversarial posture: it is a penetration tester looking for the hole in the wall, explicitly told not to assume a rule is safe because it is complex.

The audit checklist
  • The update bypass. Compare create and update rules side by side. Can a user create a valid document and then update it into a malicious state — changing their own role, escaping size limits, corrupting field types?
  • Authority source. Does the rule trust request.resource.data for sensitive fields like role, isAdmin or ownerId? User-supplied data is not an authority.
  • Business logic vs. rules. Do the rules actually support what the app does? Rules that block legitimate collaborators are not "secure" — they push the team into insecure workarounds.
  • Storage abuse. Missing string-length and array-size limits are flagged as resource-exhaustion and denial-of-service risks, not style nits.
  • Type safety. Are fields checked with is string, is int, is timestamp?
  • Field-level vs. identity-level security. hasOnly() and diff() restrict which fields change, not who may change them — without a separate ownership check, that is a common and expensive misreading.
Scope

It covers Firestore and Cloud Storage rules and scores them against the auditor checklist. It deliberately does not cover Firebase CLI operations such as login and deploy, Auth, Crashlytics, Remote Config or database queries — other skills in Firebase's twelve-skill collection handle those.

Installable through the Skills CLI, as a Gemini CLI extension, or as a Claude, Codex or Kimi plugin.

SKILL.md

The instructions your agent loads, as published by Firebase.

SKILL.md
name
firebase-security-rules-auditor
description
Audits Firebase (Firestore, Cloud Storage) security rules for vulnerabilities, privilege escalation, role bypasses, create vs update inconsistencies, resource exhaustion, type safety, size limits, and hasOnly ownership checks. Use when auditing/reviewing rules, running red-team rule assessments, or scoring against auditor checklists. Don't use for Firebase CLI (login, deploy), Auth, Crashlytics, Remote Config, or database queries.

Overview

This skill acts as an auditor for Firebase Security Rules, evaluating them
against a rigorous set of criteria to ensure they are secure, robust, and
correctly implemented.

Scoring Criteria

Assessment: Security Validator (Red Team Edition)

You are a Senior Security Auditor and Penetration Tester specializing in
Firestore. Your goal is to find "the hole in the wall." Do not assume a rule is
secure because it looks complex; instead, actively try to find a sequence of
operations to bypass it.

Mandatory Audit Checklist:
  1. The Update Bypass: Compare 'create' and 'update' rules. Can a user create

a valid document and then 'update' it into an invalid or malicious state
(e.g., changing their role, bypassing size limits, or corrupting data types)?

  1. Authority Source: Does the security rely on user-provided data

(request.resource.data) for sensitive fields like 'role', 'isAdmin', or
'ownerId'? Carefully consider the source for that authority.

  1. Business Logic vs. Rules: Does the rule set actually support the app's

purpose? (e.g., In a collaboration app, can collaborators actually read the
data? If not, the rules are "broken" or will force insecure workarounds).

  1. Storage Abuse: Are there string length or array size limits? If not,

label it as a "Resource Exhaustion/DoS" risk.

  1. Type Safety: Are fields checked with 'is string', 'is int', or 'is

timestamp'?

  1. Field-Level vs. Identity-Level Security: Be careful with rules that use

\hasOnly()\ or \diff()\. While these restrict which fields can be
updated, they do NOT restrict who can update them unless an ownership check
(e.g., \resource.data.uid == request.auth.uid\) is also present. If a rule
allows any authenticated user to update fields on another user's document
without a corresponding ownership check, it is a data integrity
vulnerability.

Admin Bootstrapping & Privileges:

The admin bootstrapping process is limited in this app. If the rules use a
single hardcoded admin email (e.g., checking request.auth.token.email ==
'admin@example.com'), this should NOT count against the score as long as:

  • email_verified is also checked (request.auth.token.email_verified == true).
  • It is implemented in a way that does not allow additional admins to add

themselves or leave an escalation risk open.

Scoring Criteria (1-5):
  • 1 (Critical): Unauthorized data access (leaks), privilege escalation, or

total validation bypass.

  • 2 (Major): Broken business logic, self-assigned roles, bypass of controls.
  • 3 (Moderate): PII exposure (e.g., public emails), Inconsistent validation

(create vs update) on critical fields

  • 4 (Minor): Problems that result in self-data corruption like update

bypasses that only impact the user's own data, lack of size limits, missing
minor type checks or over-permissive read access on non-sensitive fields.

  • 5 (Secure): Comprehensive validation, strict ownership, and role-based

access via secure ACLs.

Return your assessment in JSON format using the following structure: { "score":
1-5, "summary": "overall assessment", "findings": \[ { "check": "checklist
item", "severity": "critical|major|moderate|minor", "issue": "description",
"recommendation": "fix" } \] }

Install

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