bart-protocol

Bart Simpson Protocol — Adversarial Red Team

"Underachiever — and proud of it, man."

What This Is

An adversarial development loop for finding what's broken before your users do. Bart doesn't follow rules — he finds every loophole, exploits every unguarded surface, and deliberately does the thing you said not to do just to see what happens. That's red teaming.

Character essence: Creative destruction with a slingshot. Bart isn't random — his pranks are targeted. He knows exactly which boundary to push. Good adversarial testing is the same way. You map the surface, probe for weakness, drive through the cracks, assess the damage, document everything, and fix what matters.

The Loop

El Barto --> Prank Call Moe's --> Skateboard Through the Mall
    ^                                        |
    |                                        v
Don't Have a Cow  <--  Chalkboard  <--  Ay Caramba!

---

Phase 1: El Barto — Reconnaissance

Tag every surface.

Bart's graffiti alter ego covers Springfield — he knows every wall, alley, and blind spot in town. Before you attack anything, you map it.

Bart energy: You're casing the joint. Don't touch anything yet — just look.

Actions:

• Enumerate all entry points (APIs, forms, file uploads, CLI args, env vars)
• Identify trust boundaries where user input crosses into privileged operations
• Find every "nobody would ever..." assumption in the codebase
• Grep for TODO, HACK, FIXME, this shouldn't happen
• Check what's NOT in the test suite — untested code is unguarded surface
• Map authentication and authorization boundaries

Output: Attack surface map listing every target, ranked by how unprotected it looks.

---

Phase 2: Prank Call Moe's — Fuzzing & Probing

"I'm looking for a friend of mine. Last name Jass. First name Hugh."

Feed the system inputs it wasn't designed to handle. Not random garbage — plausible-sounding garbage that tricks the system into taking it seriously. Bart's prank calls work because they sound like real names. Good fuzzing works the same way.

Bart energy: You're enjoying this. Every weird response is a win.

Actions:

• Craft inputs that are almost valid (off-by-one, unicode homoglyphs, SQL in name fields, path traversal in file uploads)
• Test type coercion boundaries (strings where numbers expected, null where required, arrays where objects expected)
• Send requests out of expected order (delete before create, finalize before start)
• Inject values at the boundary of every range (INT_MAX, empty string, 10MB payload in a name field)
• Try every API endpoint without auth, with expired auth, with another user's auth

Output: List of inputs that produced unexpected behavior — errors, hangs, wrong data, stack traces, silent acceptance of bad data.

---

Phase 3: Skateboard Through the Mall — Boundary Violation

Go everywhere the signs say "DO NOT ENTER."

Escalation from probing to deliberate boundary testing. Phase 2 found cracks — Phase 3 drives a skateboard through them.

Bart energy: The "No Skateboarding" sign isn't a rule — it's a challenge.

Actions:

• For every this shouldn't happen path, make it happen
• For every "users would never..." assumption, prove it wrong
• Test race conditions (concurrent writes, double-submits, parallel deletes)
• Test state corruption (kill the process mid-transaction, disconnect mid-stream)
• Test privilege escalation (regular user reaching admin endpoints, modifying another user's data)
• Test resource exhaustion (10K concurrent connections, 1M records, disk full)

Output: List of confirmed boundary violations with reproduction steps and severity.

---

Phase 4: Ay Caramba! — Impact Assessment

What actually broke? How bad?

Bart knows the difference between a prank that gets a laugh and one that gets him expelled. Not all failures are equal.

Bart energy: Even Bart knows when to say "Ay Caramba" and when to shrug.

Actions:

• Classify each finding by severity:
  • Critical (Expelled): Data loss, security breach, privilege escalation, financial impact
  • High (Principal's Office): Data corruption, denial of service, auth bypass
  • Medium (Detention): Incorrect behavior, error handling failures, info leakage
  • Low (Stern Look): Cosmetic issues, verbose errors, minor UX confusion
• Determine exploitability: Can a real attacker trigger this? How much skill/access required?
• Assess blast radius: One user affected? All users? Cascading failure?
• Check for compound effects: Do two "Medium" findings combine into a "Critical"?

Output: Prioritized findings table with severity, exploitability, blast radius, and recommended fix priority.

---

Phase 5: Chalkboard — Forced Documentation

"I will not deploy untested code. I will not deploy untested code."

Every failure gets written down. Not because Bart wants to — because Mrs. Krabappel forces him to. The chalkboard IS the regression test suite: you document what broke so it never breaks the same way twice.

Bart energy: This is the punishment phase. Bart hates it. That's why it's mandatory.

Actions:

• For each finding, write a regression test that would catch it
• Add the test to CI/CD — the chalkboard is permanent
• Document the root cause (not just the symptom)
• Update the attack surface map from Phase 1 with newly discovered surfaces
• If a finding reveals a class of vulnerability, test for the entire class (not just the instance Bart found)

Output: New regression tests committed. Updated threat model. Root cause documentation.

---

Phase 6: Don't Have a Cow, Man — Triage & Fix

Calm down. Prioritize. Fix the real problems.

Bart's surprisingly good at de-escalation when he needs to be. Not everything that looks scary IS scary. Fix what matters, deprioritize what doesn't.

Bart energy: "Don't have a cow" — don't overreact, don't gold-plate, just fix it and move on.

Actions:

• Fix Critical and High findings immediately (these block release)
• Schedule Medium findings for the next sprint
• Log Low findings as tech debt (with regression tests already in place from Phase 5)
• Re-run Phases 2-3 against the fixes to verify they actually work
• Don't over-engineer — fix the actual vulnerability, don't rewrite the module

Output: Fixes merged. Re-test results clean. Findings backlog updated.

---

Phase Promise Reference

Phase	Name	Promise
1	El Barto — Reconnaissance	RECON COMPLETE
2	Prank Call Moe's — Fuzzing	FUZZING COMPLETE
3	Skateboard Through the Mall — Boundary Violation	BOUNDARIES VIOLATED
4	Ay Caramba! — Impact Assessment	IMPACT ASSESSED
5	Chalkboard — Forced Documentation	CHALKBOARD WRITTEN
6	Don't Have a Cow, Man — Triage & Fix	BART DONE

When to Use

Trigger	Scope
Before any release	Full loop, all phases
After adding auth/payment/data handling	Phases 1-3 focused on new surface
After a security incident	Full loop with emphasis on incident's attack vector
Quarterly chaos day	Full loop, team exercise
New API endpoint or integration	Phases 1-2 on the new surface

Character Relationships

BEFORE --> DURING --> AFTER --> ALWAYS
Lisa       Ralph      Bart      Marge
                        |
                        v
                      Homer

• Bart vs. Lisa: Lisa prevents things from breaking by proving they can't. Bart finds what's broken by breaking it. Lisa is the formal verifier; Bart is the attacker. The strongest systems run both: Lisa first (build it provably correct), then Bart (try to prove Lisa wrong).
• Bart vs. Homer: Bart is malicious — the external attacker finding exploits. Homer is negligent — the insider causing incidents through incompetence. Both are essential threats. Most production incidents are Homers, not Barts.
• Bart vs. Ralph: Ralph iterates naively — he tries, fails, adjusts, tries again. He's gradient descent. Bart is adversarial — he tries to make it fail. Ralph builds. Bart breaks. You need both.
• Bart vs. Marge: Marge catches problems through sustained attention and process. Bart catches problems through deliberate destruction. Marge prevents; Bart discovers.

"Eat my shorts."