Read 2026-10-04
knadh/listmonk: technical due diligence, read from its repository
What Borehole read in knadh/listmonk's code and history at 5e23f60: 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 | adequate |
| Engineering Process & SDLC Maturity | adequate |
| Product & Engineering Maturity | adequate |
| Security & Reliability Posture | adequate |
| Observability & Operations | adequate |
| Fit with the Acquirer | not assessable |
Architecture & Codebase — including AI provenance
adequate1 base image floats: no version, or `latest`
adequate1 of 1 `FROM` lines in product Dockerfiles name an image without a version, or with `latest`. Each build pulls whatever the registry serves that day, so the image that ships can change without a commit, and last month's build cannot be reproduced. Pin a version, or a digest.
Dockerfile:1 — base image without a version |
Engineering Process & SDLC Maturity
adequateTests cover a thin slice of the codebase
adequate16 test files against 268 source files (6.0%). This does not measure whether the tests are good, only whether enough of them exist for the codebase to be changed safely by someone who did not write it — which is exactly the situation after an acquisition.
| 16 test files / 268 source files |
Product & Engineering Maturity
adequate5% of bug fixes add or change a test
adequateOf 153 fixes in the last 24 months, 8 touched a test. A fix without the test that would have caught the bug can quietly come back, and the suite never learns from what went wrong.
| 8 of 153 |
Security & Reliability Posture
adequate1 Dockerfile runs the application as root
adequateNo USER instruction switches away from root, so the process runs with full privileges inside the container. It is a one-line fix and an ordinary expectation, which is why its absence is worth asking about: it usually says more about whether anyone has reviewed the deployment than about this container specifically.
Dockerfile — runs as root |
The build runs third-party code it does not pin
adequate7 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/github-pages.yml:29 — action pinned by tag |
.github/workflows/github-pages.yml:48 — action pinned by tag |
3 outbound calls can wait forever
adequate3 HTTP calls use a client with no timeout (Python `requests` without `timeout=`, or Go's default client). When a dependency slows down, each one holds a worker until the connection gives up, and enough of them take the service down with the dependency.
cmd/updates.go:44 — outbound call without a timeout |
internal/bounce/webhooks/ses.go:97 — outbound call without a timeout |
internal/bounce/webhooks/ses.go:237 — outbound call without a timeout |
1 SQL statement built from strings
adequate1 places in product code build SQL by formatting or joining strings rather than passing parameters. In each, what the code shows going in is a table or column name, a constant, or something the line does not show, not a request's value. Ask whether any value reaches these strings, rather than a parameter.
cmd/install.go:282 — SQL built from a string |
33 locked dependencies have published vulnerabilities, 52 high or critical
adequate33 of 835 locked dependencies match 97 published advisories in OSV, 52 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. This lockfile pins development tools alongside what ships and does not say which is which, so some of these may never reach a user.
frontend/yarn.lock — axios 1.16.0: GHSA-3pq3-5fj3-cg6v (high), fixed in 1.20.0 |
frontend/email-builder/yarn.lock — brace-expansion 1.1.11: GHSA-3jxr-9vmj-r5cp (high), fixed in 1.1.16 |
frontend/email-builder/yarn.lock — brace-expansion 2.0.1: GHSA-3jxr-9vmj-r5cp (high), fixed in 2.1.2 |
7 advisories against this project in the last 24 months, 3 high or critical
adequateThe newest was published on 2026-06-26. A project that publishes advisories is telling its users about its fixes, and the count and pace say how much security work it carries.
| 2026-06-26: GHSA-xgjr-7j9q-2h4r (moderate), fixed in 6.2.0: SQL Injection in `/api/subscribers/export` bypasses table access control, leaking admin password hashes and SMTP credentials |
| 2026-04-01: GHSA-h5j9-cvrw-v5qh (high), fixed in 1.1.1-0.20260329113754-1b5e8d38c778: listmonk's active sessions remain valid after password reset and password change |
| 2026-03-31: GHSA-85j8-5c6w-gcpv (moderate), fixed in v6.1.0: List permission bypass in multiple hotpaths |
| 2026-01-02: GHSA-jmr4-p576-v565 (moderate), fixed in 1.1.1-0.20251231125615-74dc5a01cfbb: listmonk Vulnerable to Stored XSS Leading to Admin Account Takeover |
| 2025-09-09: GO-2025-3943 (critical): listmonk: CSRF to XSS Chain can Lead to Admin Account Takeover in github.com/knadh/listmonk |
Observability & Operations
adequateNo telemetry or error reporting is wired in anywhere
adequateNone of 417 readable files references an instrumentation, metrics or error-reporting library. If this system is in production, nobody learns that it broke from the system itself — they learn it from a customer. That is a reliability finding before it is an observability one.
| searched 417 tracked text files for 16 known instrumentation libraries; manifests for metrics, tracing and error-reporting families; locked dependencies for the packages that emit; 0 matched |
One 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 |
1 of 2 deployed images carry no version, or `latest`
adequate1 images in the deployment configuration are named without a version or as `latest`. A redeploy can change the software without a commit, a rollback has nothing to roll back to, and nobody can say from the repository what is running.
docker-compose.yml:12 — image without a version |
Fit with the Acquirer
not assessableNot rated: structurally not assessable from a repository.
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