Borehole · Project · free tier
hackmdio/codimd
Free reading: not for reliance
b1188a5 · 3,094 commits · 416 files
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.

DimensionRating
Architecture & Codebase — including AI provenancestrong
Engineering Process & SDLC Maturitystrong
Product & Engineering Maturitystrong
Security & Reliability Postureadequate
Observability & Operationsadequate
Fit with the Acquirernot assessable

What the repository says

  • LICENSE: Relicensed: MIT → AGPL-3.0 (2017-12-06)

Architecture & Codebase — including AI provenance

strong
01.6

public/js/index.js is 3,339 lines, 59× this codebase's median file

adequate

The 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.

Evidence
public/js/index.js:1 — 3,339 lines (59× median)
public/js/extra.js:1 — 1,565 lines (27× median)

Engineering Process & SDLC Maturity

strong

No finding.

Product & Engineering Maturity

strong
04.17

Node.js 16 is past end of life

adequate

The 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.

Evidence
.nvmrc — Node.js 16, end of life 2023-09-11

Security & Reliability Posture

adequate
05.2

None of the standard security guard rails are configured

adequate

There 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.

Evidence
checked 5 kinds of guard rail across 416 tracked files; 0 present
05.27

The build runs third-party code it does not pin

adequate

5 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.

Evidence
.github/workflows/push-image.yml:41 — action pinned by tag
.github/workflows/push-image.yml:46 — action pinned by tag
05.26

67 locked dependencies have published vulnerabilities, 90 high or critical in what ships

adequate

67 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.

Evidence
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
05.9

5 vendored components with no licence

adequate

Third-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.

Evidence
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
05.60

Relicensed: MIT → AGPL-3.0 (2017-12-06)

adequate

The 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.

Evidence
LICENSE — MIT from 2015-05-04
LICENSE — AGPL-3.0 from 2017-12-06
05.65

5 advisories against this project in the last 24 months, 2 high or critical

adequate

The 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.

Evidence
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

adequate
06.8

One request cannot be followed through the logs

adequate

Nothing 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.

Evidence
no request id, correlation id or tracing found
06.9

No error reporter is wired in

adequate

Nothing 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.

Evidence
no error reporter initialised

Fit with the Acquirer

not assessable

Not 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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