aion-context ships an on-disk cryptographic file format. Bugs in
signing, verification, hashing, key management, or the audit chain
matter to people who have not yet downloaded a release. We treat
security reports as the highest-priority class of issue.
Do not file public GitHub issues for security bugs. Use one of the private channels below.
Open a private advisory directly from the repository:
https://github.com/aion-context/aion-context/security/advisories/new
(or, after the org transfer, the equivalent path under the new org)
This routes the report to maintainers privately, gives the report a stable identifier, and lets us coordinate fixes and CVE assignment in one thread. It is the path we recommend.
TODO(launch): dedicated
security@…mailbox + GPG key go here once the project's org is set up. Until then, please prefer the GitHub private-advisory flow above.
When emailing, include enough detail for us to reproduce, and please
do not include third-party PII or information from real .aion
files in the report.
| Area | In scope |
|---|---|
src/crypto.rs — Ed25519 / BLAKE3 / ChaCha20-Poly1305 wrappers |
yes |
src/signature_chain.rs — per-version signing & verification |
yes |
src/multisig.rs — quorum verification (RFC-0021) |
yes |
src/key_registry.rs — registry-aware verify, rotation, revocation (RFC-0028 / RFC-0034) |
yes |
src/parser.rs — file-format parsing on adversary-controlled bytes |
yes |
src/audit.rs — audit-chain integrity |
yes |
src/keystore.rs — key material lifecycle |
yes |
src/transparency_log.rs — RFC 6962 Merkle log + STH |
yes |
src/hw_attestation.rs, src/hybrid_sig.rs — RFC-0026 / RFC-0027 |
yes |
src/release.rs, src/manifest.rs, src/dsse.rs, src/slsa.rs, src/aibom.rs, src/oci.rs — supply-chain glue |
yes |
src/jcs.rs — RFC 8785 canonical JSON |
yes |
aion CLI binary (src/bin/aion.rs) |
yes |
test_helpers (cfg-gated, not in production builds) |
no |
Examples under examples/ |
no — these are demonstrations, not production code |
| Downstream applications consuming aion-context | no — file with the downstream |
If you're unsure, err on the side of reporting privately. We can move it to a public issue if it turns out to be out of scope.
- Acknowledge within 3 business days that we received the report.
- Triage within 7 business days — confirm reproducibility, assess severity, and either accept or explain why we believe it's out of scope.
- Fix in private. Patch lands on a non-public branch; we may ask for your help validating it.
- Coordinate disclosure. By default we publish a GitHub advisory and request a CVE. You receive named credit unless you ask otherwise. If we and you both agree the bug is low-severity, we may skip CVE assignment but always publish the advisory.
- Release. We cut a patch release within a target of 30 days of triage for high-severity issues. Lower-severity issues may wait for the next routine release; we'll tell you the plan.
We use the CVSS 3.1 calculator as a starting point but reserve judgement on what counts as critical for this codebase specifically. The classes that we consider load-bearing:
- Crypto break — anything that allows producing a
(file, signature)pair an honest verifier accepts, without holding the corresponding signing key, or that breaks the hash-chain integrity invariants - Replay / equivocation — anything that lets an attacker make
two distinct files both verify against the same
(author, version) - Parser DoS / RCE — adversary-controlled bytes that crash, hang, or escape the parser's invariants
- Key material exfiltration — any path through the keystore or hardware-attestation modules that exposes private bytes
If your finding is in one of those classes, please prioritize the private path even if you're unsure of full impact.
- Don't test against systems you don't own, or against
.aionfiles containing real third-party data. - Don't publish the bug or share it with others until we've had a chance to ship a fix.
- Do keep credentials and key material out of the report.
- Do be patient with the triage timeline — this is a small maintainer team, and we will reply.
Thank you for helping keep aion-context secure.