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knadh/listmonk
Free reading: not for reliance
5e23f60 · 2,033 commits · 509 files
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.

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

Architecture & Codebase — including AI provenance

adequate
01.25

1 base image floats: no version, or `latest`

adequate

1 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.

Evidence
Dockerfile:1 — base image without a version

Engineering Process & SDLC Maturity

adequate
02.3

Tests cover a thin slice of the codebase

adequate

16 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.

Evidence
16 test files / 268 source files

Product & Engineering Maturity

adequate
04.19

5% of bug fixes add or change a test

adequate

Of 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.

Evidence
8 of 153

Security & Reliability Posture

adequate
05.6

1 Dockerfile runs the application as root

adequate

No 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.

Evidence
Dockerfile — runs as root
05.27

The build runs third-party code it does not pin

adequate

7 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/github-pages.yml:29 — action pinned by tag
.github/workflows/github-pages.yml:48 — action pinned by tag
05.13

3 outbound calls can wait forever

adequate

3 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.

Evidence
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
05.20

1 SQL statement built from strings

adequate

1 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.

Evidence
cmd/install.go:282 — SQL built from a string
05.26

33 locked dependencies have published vulnerabilities, 52 high or critical

adequate

33 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.

Evidence
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
05.65

7 advisories against this project in the last 24 months, 3 high or critical

adequate

The 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.

Evidence
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

adequate
06.1

No telemetry or error reporting is wired in anywhere

adequate

None 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.

Evidence
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
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
06.18

1 of 2 deployed images carry no version, or `latest`

adequate

1 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.

Evidence
docker-compose.yml:12 — image without a version

Fit with the Acquirer

not assessable

Not rated: structurally not assessable from a repository.

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The full report on knadh/listmonk: every dimension, the questions for the room, and the audit log.

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