tenant-leak-test-author

Overview

A tenant-leak test suite is the runtime guarantee that cross-tenant access fails. This skill builds that suite from an inventory of tenant-bearing surfaces - not a pre-canned set of tests, since every product has a different surface area. Steps 1 - 5 below run the workflow end to end; the output is committed to the project repo, and cross-tenant-data-leak-tests describes the runtime contract those tests must satisfy.

When to use

• New feature introduces a tenant-bearing surface (table, API resource, queue topic, search index).
• Audit existing coverage - does the test suite probe every surface?
• PR review adds a new tenant_id column or scoped endpoint.
• Migrating from pool to bridge (or vice versa) - test surface shifts.

Step 1 - Inventory tenant-bearing surfaces

Walk the codebase and enumerate every surface that should be tenant-scoped. Categorise:

Per tenant-isolation-models-reference: "The test surface depends on the lowest isolation level in the stack." A fully-isolated UI on a shared database still needs the full DB-leak battery.

Decision point: classify each surface as pool / bridge / silo. Tests differ:

• Pool → cross-tenant access tests (the canonical battery).
• Bridge → cross-database-routing tests (tenant A's session must not connect to tenant B's DB).
• Silo → tenant-to-deployment routing tests (tenant A's request must not hit tenant B's deployment).

Step 2 - Enumerate attack patterns per surface

Per OWASP WSTG-ATHZ-02 (owasp.org/www-project-web-security-testing-guide/v42/4-Web_Application_Security_Testing/05-Authorization_Testing/02-Testing_for_Bypassing_Authorization_Schema (opens in new window)), three primary scenarios:

Layer the tenant-isolation-specific patterns (spoofed-body tenant_id, missing filter on new endpoints, cross-tenant FK and unique-constraint, JWT replay, object-storage path traversal, unfiltered search, async-job context, cache-key collision, log scrubbing) on top - the full test-per-pattern catalog is in references/attack-patterns.md.

Step 3 - Generate test cases

For each (surface, pattern) cell of the matrix, generate one or more test cases. Conventions:

test_<surface>_<pattern>_<expected>()
e.g.,
test_documents_api_horizontal_escalation_returns_403()
test_storage_bucket_idor_returns_403()
test_jwt_replay_cross_tenant_returns_401()
test_async_job_tenant_context_reload_on_exec()

Each test creates fixtures for two tenants A and B, performs the cross-access attempt, and asserts denial. Per OWASP WSTG-ATHZ-02: create two users with identical privileges, hold concurrent sessions for both, and modify session tokens and parameters to target the other user's data

• with tenant_id as the "other identity".

Required fixtures

Step 4 - Pick the test framework + emit skeleton

Pick by stack:

Minimal probe - fixture two tenants, attempt cross-access by ID, and assert denial without existence disclosure:

class TestDocumentsTenantIsolation:
    def test_tenant_a_cannot_read_tenant_b_document(
        self, client, tenant_a_user, tenant_b_resource
    ):
        client.force_login(tenant_a_user)
        response = client.get(f"/api/documents/{tenant_b_resource.id}/")
        assert response.status_code == 404  # 404 not 403: no existence disclosure

The full pytest battery (list-scoping, spoofed-body, JWT-replay) and the language-agnostic Postgres RLS-direct probe are in references/framework-skeletons.md.

Step 5 - Coverage assertions

The suite is incomplete unless it covers every (surface, pattern) cell. Track via a coverage matrix:

                | horiz | vert | IDOR | jwt | fk | cache | log
documents       |   X   |   X  |   X  |  X  | -  |   X   |  -
attachments     |   X   |   -  |   X  |  X  | -  |   -   |  -
search_index    |   X   |   -  |   X  |  X  | -  |   -   |  -
audit_log       |   X   |   -  |   -  |  -  | -  |   -   |  X

Generate this matrix from Step 1's surface inventory × Step 2's pattern list. Empty cells are coverage gaps the PR must justify.

Anti-patterns

Output

This skill produces:

• A surface inventory document (Step 1).
• An attack-pattern × surface coverage matrix (Steps 2 - 3).
• A test suite skeleton (Step 4) committed to the project repo.
• A README in the test directory documenting the matrix and how to add a surface.

The runtime gate is cross-tenant-data-leak-tests.

References

• OWASP WSTG-ATHZ-02 Testing for Bypassing Authorization Schema: owasp.org/www-project-web-security-testing-guide/v42/4-Web_Application_Security_Testing/05-Authorization_Testing/02-Testing_for_Bypassing_Authorization_Schema (opens in new window).
• Attack-pattern catalog: references/attack-patterns.md.
• Test skeletons: references/framework-skeletons.md.
• Tenant isolation models: tenant-isolation-models-reference.
• Postgres RLS: row-level-security-postgres-reference.
• Runtime gate: cross-tenant-data-leak-tests.