Read 2026-10-23
hackmdio/codimd: technical due diligence, read from its repository
What Borehole read in hackmdio/codimd's code and history at b1188a5: its licence, security advisories, releases, review practice, tests, dependencies and operations. Every finding cites the file and line it rests on. The full report also covers the team and asks the questions the code cannot answer.
| Dimension | Rating |
|---|---|
| Architecture & Codebase — including AI provenance | strong |
| Engineering Process & SDLC Maturity | strong |
| Product & Engineering Maturity | strong |
| Security & Reliability Posture | adequate |
| Observability & Operations | adequate |
| Fit with the Acquirer | not assessable |
What the repository says
LICENSE: Relicensed: MIT → AGPL-3.0 (2017-12-06)
Architecture & Codebase — including AI provenance
strongpublic/js/index.js is 3,339 lines, 59× this codebase's median file
adequateThe median source file here is 56 lines. 2 files exceed 1,000 lines, the largest being 3,339. Size is not a defect on its own — some problems genuinely live in one place — but these are where merge conflicts, review fatigue and single-owner knowledge concentrate, and they are the first thing that slows an inheriting engineer down.
public/js/index.js:1 — 3,339 lines (59× median) |
public/js/extra.js:1 — 1,565 lines (27× median) |
Engineering Process & SDLC Maturity
strongNo finding.
Product & Engineering Maturity
strongNode.js 16 is past end of life
adequateThe code is pinned to Node.js 16 (end of life 2023-09-11). None of these receives security fixes any more; the first stopped on 2023-09-11. Moving off an unsupported runtime is rarely a one-line change, so a buyer should ask whether the upgrade is planned and what it touches.
.nvmrc — Node.js 16, end of life 2023-09-11 |
Security & Reliability Posture
adequateNone of the standard security guard rails are configured
adequateThere is no disclosure policy, no automated dependency updates, no named code owners and no pre-commit configuration. None of these is load-bearing on its own. Their collective absence says that security posture here is whatever the current team happens to remember to do, which is not a posture that survives the team changing.
| checked 5 kinds of guard rail across 416 tracked files; 0 present |
The build runs third-party code it does not pin
adequate5 third-party CI actions are referenced by a tag or branch rather than a commit, so they run whatever that tag points to on the day. Tags have been moved to malicious commits in real supply-chain attacks, and a piped script is whatever the server returns that minute. Pinning to a commit is the fix, and it is small.
.github/workflows/push-image.yml:41 — action pinned by tag |
.github/workflows/push-image.yml:46 — action pinned by tag |
67 locked dependencies have published vulnerabilities, 90 high or critical in what ships
adequate67 of 761 locked dependencies match 158 published advisories in OSV, 90 of them rated high or critical. A lockfile says which version is installed, not whether the flawed code is reachable from this product, so each needs a look. Most are fixed by an upgrade, and the advisory names the version.
package-lock.json — form-data 2.3.3: GHSA-fjxv-7rqg-78g4 (critical), fixed in 2.5.4 |
package-lock.json — form-data 4.0.0: GHSA-fjxv-7rqg-78g4 (critical), fixed in 4.0.4 |
package-lock.json — mysql2 2.0.1: GHSA-4rch-2fh8-94vw (critical), fixed in 3.9.7 |
5 vendored components with no licence
adequateThird-party code is committed into this repository without any statement of the terms it arrived under. Unknown terms are harder to deal with than inconvenient ones: an awkward licence can be complied with, an absent one cannot. Each of these needs its origin established before the code changes hands.
public/vendor/abcjs_basic_3.1.1-min.js — 1 tracked files, no licence file |
public/vendor/inlineAttachment — 2 tracked files, no licence file |
public/vendor/jquery-ui — 15 tracked files, no licence file |
public/vendor/md-toc.js — 1 tracked files, no licence file |
public/vendor/ot — 11 tracked files, no licence file |
Relicensed: MIT → AGPL-3.0 (2017-12-06)
adequateThe root licence changed 1 time(s). The latest terms restrict what users, hosts or a buyer may do in ways the earlier ones did not. Code taken under the old terms stays under them, so both matter in diligence.
5 advisories against this project in the last 24 months, 2 high or critical
adequateThe newest was published on 2025-04-26. A project that publishes advisories is telling its users about its fixes, and the count and pace say how much security work it carries. Whether 3 of them are fixed in the code you ship could not be told from this history: its version is only known to be at least 2.6.0. Answer lives in: the release you run, set against each fixed version.
| 2025-04-26: CVE-2025-46654 (moderate): CodiMD through 2.2.0 has a CSP-based protection mechanism against XSS through uploaded JavaScript content, but it can be bypassed by uploading a .html file that |
| 2025-04-26: CVE-2025-46655 (moderate): CodiMD through 2.5.4 has a CSP-based protection mechanism against XSS through uploaded SVG documents containing JavaScript, but it can be bypassed in certain ca |
| 2024-07-10: GHSA-22jv-vch8-2vp9 (high), fixed in 2.5.4: Cross-site Scripting in Hackmd.io Notes lead by HTML Injection |
| 2024-07-10: GHSA-2764-jppc-p2hm (moderate), fixed in 2.5.4: CodiMD - Missing Image Access Controls and Unauthorized Image Access |
| 2024-02-21: CVE-2024-22778 (high): HackMD CodiMD <2.5.2 is vulnerable to Denial of Service. |
Observability & Operations
adequateOne request cannot be followed through the logs
adequateNothing in the service carries a request or correlation id, and there is no tracing. When a customer reports a failure, the log lines that belong to their request cannot be picked out from everyone else's.
| no request id, correlation id or tracing found |
No error reporter is wired in
adequateNothing in the service initialises an error reporter (Sentry, Rollbar, Bugsnag, Honeybadger or an APM agent). An exception in production reaches a person only if someone is reading the logs, which usually means a customer reports it first.
| no error reporter initialised |
Fit with the Acquirer
not assessableNot rated: structurally not assessable from a repository.
Read more, or read your own
The full report on hackmdio/codimd: every dimension, the questions for the room, and the audit log.
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