Security policy#

Acronyms: application programming interface (API); hash-based message authentication code (HMAC); Secure Hash Algorithm 256-bit (SHA-256); Secure Hash Algorithm 3 256-bit (SHA3-256); Verifier Standard (VSTD).

Supported release#

Only the latest tagged public release is supported. Historical receipts and standards remain immutable records; security corrections are published additively.

Reporting#

Do not place secrets, customer data, exploit payloads, or private vulnerability details in a public issue. Use Security → Report a vulnerability in the canonical GitHub repository to open a private vulnerability report with the maintainer:

https://github.com/TimeLordRaps/verifier/security/advisories/new

GitHub private vulnerability reporting is the intended sensitive-reporting route. If GitHub does not show the private-reporting form, do not disclose sensitive details in a public issue; report only the non-sensitive fact that the private route is unavailable.

Scope#

The reference implementation verifies declared receipt and provenance mechanisms. It does not sandbox arbitrary commands supplied to vstd run; execute only manifests you trust, in an isolation boundary appropriate to the command.

Use vstd plan MANIFEST --json to inspect the declared command, working directory, repository directory, and artifact paths without execution. This is a review aid, not a sandbox guarantee: a subprocess can access resources it does not declare. Paths reported outside the manifest directory may be intentional (for example, a manifest stored under examples/ can bind the repository root), so VSTD exposes them instead of pretending that rejecting them would confine the subprocess.

For VSTD-3, report parser ambiguity, signature/nonce bypass, canonicalization mismatch, continuity fork/replay acceptance, claim-strength escalation, provenance blast-radius failure, or accidental credential/raw-evidence disclosure. The HMAC emulator and local anchor keys are explicitly test-only and are not production cryptography. Vendor or cloud product vulnerabilities should also be reported to the affected vendor through its own process; VSTD does not authorize testing third-party infrastructure.

Artifact-control boundary#

vstd artifact freeze rejects symbolic links and special filesystem objects, preserves regular-file bytes, and makes the payload tree read-only. That guard is observable state, not a sandbox or a defense against privileged writes. Keep an independently controlled copy when durable preservation matters.

Version 1 seals are readable Ed25519 signatures, not encryption. Protect private keys outside artifact bundles and never commit a production private key. Because each bundle carries its own public key, self-verification alone cannot detect substitution of the entire bundle and key; relying parties should bind an expected artifact identifier, expected key identifier, or independently verified external manifest/log coordinate. SHA-256 and SHA3-256 are both recomputed over preserved bytes so later algorithm concerns can be addressed by additive re-anchoring rather than rewriting historical artifacts.