Read 2026-11-07
openwall/john: technical due diligence, read from its repository
What Borehole read in openwall/john's code and history at 5184bc0: 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 | adequate |
| Product & Engineering Maturity | adequate |
| Security & Reliability Posture | adequate |
| Observability & Operations | not assessable |
| Fit with the Acquirer | not assessable |
What the repository says
- No release for 84 months while development continues
Architecture & Codebase — including AI provenance
strongsrc/dynamic_big_crypt_generated.c is 12,929 lines, 62× this codebase's median file
adequateThe median source file here is 208 lines. 25 files exceed 2,080 lines, the largest being 12,929. 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.
src/dynamic_big_crypt_generated.c:1 — 12,929 lines (62× median) |
src/dynamic_fmt.c:1 — 8,505 lines (40× median) |
src/luks_insane_tests.h:1 — 7,334 lines (35× median) |
run/lib/ExifTool.pm:1 — 5,009 lines (24× median) |
run/pass_gen.pl:1 — 4,942 lines (23× median) |
Engineering Process & SDLC Maturity
adequateTests cover a thin slice of the codebase
adequate17 test files against 1,814 source files (0.9%). 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.
| 17 test files / 1,814 source files |
Product & Engineering Maturity
adequate0% of bug fixes add or change a test
adequateOf 60 fixes in the last 24 months, 0 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.
| 0 of 60 |
No release for 84 months while development continues
adequateThe last tag, CUDA, was cut 2522 days before the survey; the typical gap between releases was 61 days, and 13 commits landed in the last 90 days. Users run the last release, not this code.
| last tag CUDA |
Security & Reliability Posture
adequate5 credential-shaped strings committed to the tree
adequateMatches for JWT appear in tracked files outside test and fixture paths. They stay in the history even after they leave the tree, so what matters is whether each was rotated. The code cannot tell whether any of them is live, and that decides whether this matters: none sits in production configuration, and none is in a format its provider keeps for live keys. Is any of these live? Show that each was rotated after it was committed, and when.
| 5 cited: JWT pattern matched |
16 dependencies float, and no lockfile is committed
adequateDependency versions are declared as ranges and no lockfile is committed, so a build today does not necessarily produce what a build last month produced. That matters twice over in a transaction: the thing being bought cannot be reproduced exactly, and a compromised upstream release arrives without anyone choosing to take it.
run/requirements.txt:1 — ~=3.20 |
run/requirements.txt:2 — any version |
run/requirements.txt:3 — any version |
run/requirements.txt:4 — any version |
run/requirements.txt:5 — any version |
1 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.
.ci/Dockerfile — runs as root |
Observability & Operations
not assessableNot rated: only 4 of 16 checks could reach a conclusion here; the rest do not apply to this repository or could not read it.
Fit with the Acquirer
not assessableNot rated: structurally not assessable from a repository.
Read more, or read your own
The full report on openwall/john: every dimension, the questions for the room, and the audit log.
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