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Rule Reference

SEC384lintai-ai-securitygovernancehardeningstableclaude_settingswarn

Claude settings: bare WebSearch permissions

Claude settings permissions allow bare `WebSearch` in a shared committed config

Public lane
governance
Category
hardening
Provider
lintai-ai-security
Scope
per-file
Surface
claude_settings
Tier
stable
Severity
warn
Confidence
high
Detection
structural
Remediation
message only
How to read this lane

Shared authority and workflow policy review.

How to read this category

Least-privilege, provenance, or operational hygiene signal.

Activation Model

Preset Activation

These presets explain where this rule appears in the product experience.

Lifecycle

Stable Lifecycle Contract

State

stable

Graduation rationale

Checks shared Claude settings permissions for bare `WebSearch` grants without a reviewed scope.

Deterministic signal basis

ClaudeSettingsSignals exact string detection for bare `WebSearch` inside permissions.allow on parsed Claude settings JSON.

Malicious corpus
claude-settings-unscoped-websearch
Benign corpus
claude-settings-websearch-scoped-safe
structured evidence required remediation reviewed
Canonical note

Structural stable rule intended as a high-precision check with deterministic evidence.

Nearby Signals

Related Rules

SEC384 / CLAUDE-WEBSEARCH-UNSCOPED

SEC384 flags shared Claude settings when permissions.allow grants bare WebSearch instead of a narrower reviewed pattern.

Why It Matters

Bare WebSearch is a broad capability grant. In shared team settings it is easy to cargo-cult into repositories without review, which makes network-search scope harder to reason about than an explicit constrained permission.

Trigger Shape

The rule triggers only when all of these are true:

  • the file is a detected Claude settings surface
  • the path is not fixture-like
  • permissions.allow contains the exact token WebSearch

Clean Cases

These stay clean:

  • WebSearch(*), which is handled by a separate wildcard rule
  • scoped patterns such as WebSearch(site:docs.example.com)
  • fixture-like examples under test or fixture paths

Example Trigger

json
{
  "permissions": {
    "allow": ["WebSearch", "Read(*)"]
  }
}

Safer Example

json
{
  "permissions": {
    "allow": ["WebSearch(site:docs.example.com)", "Read(*)"]
  }
}

How To Fix

Replace bare WebSearch with a narrower reviewed permission pattern, or remove broad search access from the shared Claude settings file.