Read 2026-10-04
ory/kratos: technical due diligence, read from its repository
What Borehole read in ory/kratos's code and history at b86338d: 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
CONTRIBUTING.md:212: states a policy on AI-generated contributions
Architecture & Codebase — including AI provenance
strongCommit messages are templated rather than written
adequate31% of commit subjects are exact repeats of another subject, and subject length varies by only 16.3 characters. A log written by someone explaining their reasoning to a future reader does not look like this. The log is therefore weak evidence of intent, whatever the code is like.
| 668× 'autogen(docs): regenerate and update changelog' |
| 238× 'autogen(docs): generate and format documentation' |
| 151× 'autogen(docs): update milestone document' |
pkg/client-go/api_frontend.go is 6,730 lines, 6730× this codebase's median file
adequateThe median source file here is 1 lines. 13 files exceed 1,000 lines, the largest being 6,730. 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.
pkg/client-go/api_frontend.go:1 — 6,730 lines (6730× median) |
pkg/httpclient/api_frontend.go:1 — 6,730 lines (6730× median) |
pkg/client-go/api_identity.go:1 — 3,809 lines (3809× median) |
pkg/httpclient/api_identity.go:1 — 3,809 lines (3809× median) |
persistence/sql/identity/persister_identity.go:1 — 2,189 lines (2189× median) |
Engineering Process & SDLC Maturity
adequateTests cover a thin slice of the codebase
adequate517 test files against 6,717 source files (7.7%). 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.
| 517 test files / 6,717 source files |
Tests are retried until they pass
adequateThe suite is configured to retry failing tests (test/e2e/playwright.config.ts). A retry turns a flaky test green without saying why it failed, so a green build means the tests passed eventually. Ask how many retries a typical run needs, and which tests need them.
test/e2e/playwright.config.ts:16 — test retry |
Product & Engineering Maturity
adequate89 direct dependencies in a single manifest
adequateoryx/go.mod declares 89 direct dependencies. Each one is a maintenance obligation, a supply-chain surface and a potential licence question that transfers with the asset. The count says nothing about whether any given dependency was a good choice; it says how many such choices a buyer inherits.
oryx/go.mod — 89 declared |
go.mod — 80 declared |
package.json — 2 declared |
oryx/randx/strength/go.mod — 1 declared |
Node.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
adequate1 credential-shaped string in the tree sit in tests, examples, documentation or local development settings
adequateStrings shaped like credentials appear only where fakes are usual: test fixtures, examples, documentation, placeholders and local stacks. They are almost always fakes. Ask someone to confirm that none of them works anywhere, because a real key in a development file is still a real key.
| JWT, where fakes are usual |
The build runs third-party code it does not pin
adequate24 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; 1 step pipes a download straight into a shell. 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/ci.yaml:50 — action pinned by tag |
.github/workflows/ci.yaml:59 — action pinned by tag |
install.sh:42 — download piped into a shell |
8 locked dependencies have published vulnerabilities, 13 high or critical
adequate8 of 452 locked dependencies match 28 published advisories in OSV, 13 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. None of the high or critical ones is in what the product ships: only the build reaches them: a bundler, a code generator, a build plugin, or a lockfile in a tooling directory.
package-lock.json — axios 1.18.1: GHSA-3pq3-5fj3-cg6v (high), fixed in 1.20.0; reached only by the build |
package-lock.json — basic-ftp 5.3.1: GHSA-c475-qrg2-pj4r (high), fixed in 6.2.1; reached only by the build |
package-lock.json — brace-expansion 5.0.7: GHSA-6j4f-fj2g-mc7p (high), fixed in 5.0.10; reached only by the build |
2 advisories against this project in the last 24 months, 1 high or critical
adequateThe newest was published on 2026-03-20. A project that publishes advisories is telling its users about its fixes, and the count and pace say how much security work it carries. None of them affects the surveyed version. The record is incomplete: NVD: 2 records name kratos with nothing tying them to this repository (CVE-2026-42300, CVE-2026-6993).
| 2026-03-20: GHSA-hgx2-28f8-6g2r (high), fixed in 1.3.1-0.20260320110106-9d7085948039: Ory Kratos has a SQL injection via forged pagination tokens |
| 2024-09-26: GHSA-wc43-73w7-x2f5 (moderate), fixed in 1.3.0: Ory Kratos's setting required_aal `highest_available` does not properly respect code + mfa credentials |
Observability & Operations
not assessableNot rated: only 5 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.
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