Release notes now carry one row per product — the bytes actually published, with
their VirusTotal verdict — instead of a column per candidate.
Several candidates are scanned so the selector has an alternative when an opaque
classifier flags one, but a reader installing cbm cares about what they receive,
not about what we discarded. The rejected candidates' verdicts remain in the
published evidence TSVs for anyone auditing the selection, and they stay useful
to US as a development signal; in a changelog they are noise, and listing a
"microsoft-ml" verdict next to a binary nobody can download invites exactly the
wrong conclusion.
Also removes a claim that had become FALSE: the section asserted that every scan
had a minimum of 50 decisive engines. That floor was removed deliberately (it is
VirusTotal fleet availability, not a property of our binary) and the last release
observed 31. Published notes would have stated something untrue. The observed
range is still reported, now over the shipped binaries.
The disclosure of a tolerated Microsoft `!ml` is preserved and narrowed to the
binaries that ship. The contract test now pins both directions: a flagged binary
that SHIPS must be disclosed, and flagged candidates that were rejected must not
appear at all. Its fixture gained a target that draws the tolerated verdict on
all three candidates, so the disclosure branch is actually exercised — previously
every flagged candidate was rejected in favour of a clean sibling, leaving that
path untested.
README and SECURITY.md updated: they promised notes "link every candidate result".
All five release/VT contract tests pass.
Signed-off-by: Martin Vogel <martin.vogel.tech@gmail.com>
Two things, both found by the dry-run and by sweeping what it exposed.
1. The three-candidate change was incomplete. The dry-run failed at
stage-release-candidates.py, which carries its OWN copy of the transform
validation that the previous commit only fixed in the selector:
stage-release-candidates: candidate linux-amd64/debug-stripped has
invalid transform: 'strip-debug'
Sweeping for that assumption found it in six places, not two:
stage-release-candidates.py, select-release-candidates.py,
verify-release-selection.py, append-vt-notes.sh and two contract-test
fixtures — as hardcoded 16s, `len(TARGETS) * 2`, two-entry VARIANTS tuples
and two-key truth tables. All are now derived from len(VARIANTS).
Field prefixes needed care: the variant NAME keeps its hyphen because it is
the on-disk directory, while the evidence columns use underscores, so
`debug-stripped` reads `debug_stripped_sha256`. Every lookup now goes through
an explicit FIELD_KEY map instead of interpolating the variant directly.
The selection contract test now covers the truth table EXHAUSTIVELY: three
variants x two tolerated classifications is exactly eight combinations, and
there are exactly eight targets, so every case is exercised once.
2. Full-surface VirusTotal scanning is restored. This PR had moved scanning
upstream to the candidates and deleted the post-package pass, which silently
narrowed coverage from everything we ship to executables only. The 42 runtime
files across the 14 containers — install.sh, install.ps1, LICENSE,
THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md, the MCPB manifest.json and the unpacked UI assets —
were still extracted, structurally verified and strings-audited, but no
longer scanned at all. install.sh and install.ps1 are the highest-consequence
non-executable bytes we publish; users pipe them straight into a shell.
The verify job scans every extracted object again, under the same policy.
Re-submitting the selected executables alongside them is close to free
because VirusTotal is content-addressed and answers for identical bytes from
its own record — the same property that made the analysis-id equality check
untenable two commits ago.
The gate-chain contract asserted the opposite ("duplicate post-package
VirusTotal path remains"). That assertion is inverted: the pass is required,
and it is not a duplicate, since it covers a strictly larger set. README and
SECURITY.md updated from "archive containers are checksummed rather than
redundantly rescanned" to state the full covered surface.
All five release/VT contract tests pass.
Signed-off-by: Martin Vogel <martin.vogel.tech@gmail.com>
Release evidence from run 31744302624 shows the tolerated Microsoft `!ml`
verdict is close to a coin flip per byte image rather than a property of the
code. Across the eight targets the stripped and unstripped candidates of the
SAME linker output disagreed on four, and in both directions:
linux-amd64 stripped microsoft-ml unstripped clean
darwin-arm64 stripped clean unstripped microsoft-ml
linux-arm64 stripped clean unstripped microsoft-ml
If the classifier were keying on something intrinsic to our code the siblings
would agree; they do not. So each variant is close to an independent draw, and
5 of 16 candidates drew the flag.
Two draws is not always enough. On that run linux-amd64-portable came back
microsoft-ml on BOTH candidates, leaving no clean binary to ship for that
target. A third independent draw at a ~31% observed per-candidate hit rate takes
the both/all-flagged case from roughly 1-in-10 per target to roughly 1-in-30.
The third candidate is `--strip-debug` (Apple: `-S`): debug information removed,
symbol table kept. Behaviourally identical to the other two — same linker
output, only metadata differs — but a distinct byte image, which is all
VirusTotal needs to scan it as its own file. Verified on the real v0.10.4
candidates: linux-amd64 gives three distinct hashes (294,634,656 /
294,623,208 / 293,746,096 bytes) and darwin-arm64 likewise, with the ad-hoc
signature verifying after strip.
Selection is unchanged in spirit and now ordered: smallest artifact first
(stripped, debug-stripped, unstripped), take the first CLEAN one, and only if
every candidate drew the tolerated verdict ship the smallest flagged one. A
hard verdict on any candidate still blocks the release before selection.
Cost is 24 objects per release instead of 16.
Derivation enforces that all three hashes differ — identical candidates would be
one draw wearing three hats, and the selector would believe it had alternatives
it does not have. Public claims in README, SECURITY.md and docs/index.html
updated from "both stripped and unstripped" to the three candidates.
All three release contract tests pass, including the native derivation test
which exercises the real strip and codesign path on this host.
Signed-off-by: Martin Vogel <martin.vogel.tech@gmail.com>
The build+VT dry-run (run 31744302624) blocked all eight targets on:
BLOCKED: objects/3eb486a4... completed with only 48/75 decisive engines (< 50)
That object is the windows-arm64 STRIPPED candidate with ZERO detections. It
was classified "hard" — the same bucket as a real malware verdict — purely
because 48 engines answered instead of 50. Its own sibling scanned clean with
66.
How many engines return a decisive result is VirusTotal fleet availability on
the day, not a property of our binary. These artifacts are ~300 MB and many
engines skip or time out at that size, so the count sits near the floor and
moves run to run: on this run one object landed at 48 and the other fifteen
spread 59-68. A floor there makes shipping a lottery decided by someone else's
infrastructure, which is exactly what our CI-determinism rule forbids, and it is
not something we can influence by fixing anything on our side.
Classification now depends only on what engines FOUND:
hard - two or more engines, any non-Microsoft engine, any label that is
not `!ml`, or anything suspicious. Still blocks the release.
microsoft-ml- exactly one Microsoft `!ml`. Tolerated and disclosed.
clean - nothing flagged.
The decisive-engine count is still recorded per candidate in the results
manifest and printed as a NOTE when it is below the reference value, so the
evidence is unchanged; only its power to block is gone. The selector keeps
rejecting an incoherent response (total < completed).
Public claims updated to match in README.md, SECURITY.md and docs/index.html —
all three promised "at least 50 decisive engines" as a publication requirement,
which would no longer have been true.
Contract test updated: a clean verdict now stands regardless of engine count,
and the below-reference NOTE must still be reported. All three release contract
tests pass (vt-gate-policy, release-gate-chain, candidate-derivation).
Signed-off-by: Martin Vogel <martin.vogel.tech@gmail.com>
Five field reports in the 24 hours after v0.10.0 all pointed at the same thing:
gates that were right in principle refused real, ordinary setups, and then
failed to say why. Per the consolidated strictness decision, each gate keeps the
protection that matters and drops the part that was refusing legitimate users —
and every refusal now names what it refused and how to proceed.
**Daemon image gate: npx and every ephemeral install path (#1539, #1383).**
The admission check treated "the peer's image hashes differently" and "the
peer's image cannot be examined at all" as one failure. The second is what
`npx codebase-memory-mcp` always produces (ephemeral cache path,
unfingerprintable), so every npx-invoked client was rejected — and, because the
client never reported it, agents saw a transport that closed mid-handshake with
zero bytes on stdout. Reported by @wassolles with the admission path already
read and the fix space mapped.
An unverifiable image is now admitted: the rendezvous HELLO immediately above it
has already proven semantic version, build fingerprint, and protocol/store/
feature ABI, and the image check was trading that real proof for an unavailable
one. It logs daemon.client_image_unverifiable_admitted so the weaker check is
never invisible. A fingerprint MISMATCH — the tamper case the gate exists for —
still rejects hard. Separate test seams keep the two modes testable apart.
**Client bootstrap failures are no longer silent (#1539).**
An MCP client that cannot reach the daemon now emits a JSON-RPC error on stdout
naming the reason, plus the same text on stderr. Previously the reason sat in
bootstrap_result.message and the process exited having written nothing at all.
**POSIX activation: group-writable ancestors (#1535, discussion #1526).**
activation_directory_secure required no group or other write bit on the install
directory AND every ancestor. WSL2 ships ~ and ~/.local at 0775, as do several
distro skeletons and any site using a shared primary group, so install.sh failed
for a large fraction of Linux users — reporting a policy refusal as "activation
transaction I/O failed", which sent reporters after disk errors and filesystem
types. Root-caused by @AmirF194 in a clean ubuntu container; @shochdoerfer and
@iandol confirmed independently.
World-writable ancestors are still refused (any local user could swap a path
component mid-transaction). Group-writable ancestors are now warned about and
admitted. The LEAF directory stays strictly owner-private — that is where the
binary is published, and group write there would let another account replace the
executable between validation and exec. Refusals now name the directory, its
mode, and which rule refused.
**The obsolete ui/standard chooser (#1538, from discussion #1526).**
v0.10.0 consolidated to one archive per platform with the UI always embedded,
but `update` still offered a variant choice: "ui" could only 404, and "standard"
quietly WAS the UI build. Reported by @iandol upgrading 0.9.0 -> 0.10.0. The
chooser, its --standard/--ui flags, and the ui- URL plumbing are removed, along
with the CBM_VARIANT=ui remnant in the npm installer.
Already-released 0.9.x binaries cannot be fixed retroactively, so the release
workflow now publishes byte-identical ui-*-named alias assets — their updaters
work again with no user action. The aliases are uploaded AFTER the VirusTotal
gate: they are the same bytes as archives it already cleared, and uploading them
earlier would duplicate every object in the scan set and the provenance manifest.
**macOS install noise and attribution (#1537).**
install.sh silenced the "No such xattr: com.apple.quarantine" line, which is
what happens when a curl-downloaded archive carries no quarantine attribute —
harmless, and it became the title of a bug report about an unrelated failure.
The session-stop refusal now points at `daemon status` to list the client
processes actually holding the daemon, instead of asserting sessions exist and
leaving the reader to guess. Reported by @listepo.
**Riders.** hatchling is pinned in pkg/pypi (an unpinned backend resolved fresh
inside `python -m build` is what emitted Metadata-Version 2.5 and broke the
v0.10.1 publish); SECURITY.md's supported-versions table moves to 0.10.x.
Tests: separate seams for unverifiable vs mismatched peer images with a test per
outcome; activation refusal must name directory + mode + rule; a group-writable
ancestor must stage successfully. The update tests drop the flag that no longer
exists. Verified against each reporter's environment shape.
**Open security alerts (all three, OSSF Scorecard).**
- HIGH, binary artifact: an 8.8 MB compiled Go ELF wrapper had been committed at
pkg/go/codebase-memory-mcp by accident. Removed, and both it and its .exe
sibling are gitignored so `go build` in that directory cannot repeat it.
- HIGH, GHSA-2v37-7h3g-55p8: nanoid < 3.3.17 loops forever when a custom
generator is called with size 0. It reaches us transitively (postcss -> vite),
so it is pinned through the existing graph-ui overrides block rather than
promoted to a direct dependency; the lockfile resolves 3.3.18.
- MEDIUM, unpinned pip command: the publish step installed build/twine by
version only, leaving the whole transitive graph resolved at run time.
pkg/pypi/requirements-publish.txt now hash-pins the complete toolchain (316
hashes), generated on a linux/amd64 python:3.12 image so the wheels match what
ubuntu-latest resolves, and the step runs pip with --require-hashes. Verified
by installing from it in that same image.
Signed-off-by: Martin Vogel <martin.vogel.tech@gmail.com>
SECURITY.md gains an "Antivirus False Positives" section placed directly after
the existing Verification block so it reuses those commands rather than
restating them. It states the detection plainly, shows the measured evidence
(the verdict inverts across architectures and link modes; identical macOS
segment structure splits clean/flagged; entropy is 3.5-4.2 bits/byte, nowhere
near packed), lists the cross-project precedent, and — deliberately — records
that removing the embedded scripts and externalizing the assets did NOT move the
detection. A negative result is still evidence, and publishing it is the point.
It also documents the release policy, invites independent audit through the
provenance/cosign/checksum path we already ship, and adds an `av-analysis` issue
label route for anyone who finds something real. Tone is evidence-first: no
vendor blame, and an explicit note that signing helps Windows but that no
AV-honoured signing scheme exists for Linux ELF, so it is not a full answer.
README carries a short pointer near Quick Start, where someone who just hit a
Defender warning will actually look.
Unrelated to AV, found while dissecting the artifacts: add -Wl,-z,separate-code.
GNU ld enables it by default on x86-64 but not on aarch64, so arm64 emitted ONE
R E PT_LOAD covering the whole image and mapped ~259 MB of tree-sitter parse
tables executable at runtime. Section flags said A, not AX -- but the kernel
applies segment permissions, so the section flags were never the control. The
amd64 build of the same source mapped the same data R only.
Signed-off-by: Martin Vogel <martin.vogel.tech@gmail.com>
Routes the MCP index_repository handler and the graph UI's POST /api/index
through a single decision function. The UI route previously checked only that
root_path was a directory, so an operator's configured boundary held on one
entry point and not the other; it now canonicalizes first and applies the same
policy, answering 403 with the reason.
The decision is two-tier, because a bare default-deny would refuse every
first run and a bare opt-in leaves the default open:
- Breadth is always enforced, with nothing configured. Filesystem, drive and
share roots, top-level system trees, the home directory itself and
credential directories are refused as indexing roots out of the box.
- Containment in a declared root applies once CBM_ALLOWED_ROOT is set or a
grant exists, and is evaluated first so a path outside a configured root is
reported as exactly that.
Three things the tests caught, each a real defect rather than a test fix:
- On macOS /etc, /tmp and /var are firmlinked under /private, so
canonicalizing "/etc" yields "/private/etc" and counted two deep — sailing
past a minimum of two, missing the very path being guarded. Depth now
discounts a leading "private" component.
- An earlier draft refused any root containing the cache directory. That was
over-claimed: the indexer only parses recognised source files and a graph
database is binary SQLite it would never extract. Refusing a whole root is
also the wrong remedy where the concern does hold — not walking the cache
is. Removed, with the reasoning recorded at the site.
- Rewording the refusal to "outside every allowed root" broke an assertion
matching "outside the allowed root", and that test's early return skipped
its CBM_ALLOWED_ROOT cleanup, leaking the variable into every later test in
the suite. The original wording is kept and guidance appended instead.
Worth remembering: these contracts match strings, not properties.
Docs updated in the same change, since both env-var tables said "unset
imposes no restriction" and that is no longer true: CONFIGURATION.md and
README.md describe the two tiers, and CONFIGURATION.md lists the always-
refused roots along with the two limits that matter — this constrains scope
rather than sensitivity, and the credential list is a denylist that raises the
cost of a mistake rather than closing the class. SECURITY.md's supported-
versions table was still on 0.8.x and now reads 0.9.x.
Signed-off-by: Martin Vogel <martin.vogel.tech@gmail.com>
Add docs/SECURITY-DISCLOSURE.md describing how vulnerability reports are
handled end to end (private fix, cross-platform validation, reporter
verification, patched release, then a GitHub Security Advisory with a CVE
and credit).
Update SECURITY.md: add GitHub private vulnerability reporting as the
preferred channel, replace the over-tight 48h/7-day commitment with honest
best-effort targets for a solo-maintained project, add a safe-harbor
statement, and refresh the stale supported-versions table (0.5.x -> 0.8.x).
Signed-off-by: Martin Vogel <martin.vogel@datadice.io>
- SECURITY.md: new Transparency & Disclaimer section at the top with
honest description of filesystem access patterns and liability scope;
new Help Us Stay Secure section actively inviting security research
with a defined scope and promise of fast response + public credit
- README.md: Security & Trust callout after the intro paragraph — brief,
direct, links to SECURITY.md for full context
Every platform now has a real antivirus gate that fails the build:
- Windows: Windows Defender with ML heuristics (MpCmdRun.exe)
- Linux: ClamAV with freshclam signature update
- macOS: ClamAV with freshclam signature update
Any detection on any platform blocks the release-draft from being
created. This is on top of the VirusTotal zero-tolerance gate in
the verify job.
SECURITY.md updated with complete security architecture.
Martin Vogel
Martin Vogel