Read 2026-10-23
passbolt/passbolt_api: technical due diligence, read from its repository
What Borehole read in passbolt/passbolt_api's code and history at 5de65b8: 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 | strong |
| Product & Engineering Maturity | strong |
| Security & Reliability Posture | adequate |
| Observability & Operations | adequate |
| Fit with the Acquirer | not assessable |
What the repository says
plugins/PassboltEe/Ee/config/bootstrap.php: 8 files are named as enterprise-edition code
Architecture & Codebase — including AI provenance
strongplugins/PassboltEe/Scim/src/Utility/Resource/UserScimResource.php is 1,145 lines, 13× this codebase's median file
adequateThe median source file here is 82 lines. 3 files exceed 1,000 lines, the largest being 1,145. 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.
plugins/PassboltEe/Scim/src/Utility/Resource/UserScimResource.php:1 — 1,145 lines (13× median) |
plugins/PassboltEe/DirectorySync/src/Actions/SyncAction.php:1 — 1,009 lines (12× median) |
config/Migrations/20170830064410_V162InitialMigration.php:1 — 1,007 lines (12× median) |
Engineering Process & SDLC Maturity
strongNo finding.
Product & Engineering Maturity
strongEffort is shifting from building to rewriting
adequateDeleted lines per line added rose from 0.64 to 1.07 between the first and second halves of this history. Rework is normal and often healthy, but a rising ratio means an increasing share of the team's time is spent replacing code that already exists rather than building what does not. Whether that is deliberate repayment or churn is a question for the team.
| first half 0.64, second half 1.07 (split 2016-02-01) |
32 files still carry code deprecated more than two years ago
adequate32 files were marked deprecated over two years ago and still are, the oldest since Oct 2018. A deprecation is a promise to remove. Ask what still depends on these, and whether removing them is scheduled.
src/Utility/UserAccessControl.php — deprecated since Oct 2018 |
config/bootstrap_plugins.php — deprecated since Mar 2019 |
src/Model/Traits/Groups/GroupsFindersTrait.php — deprecated since Sep 2020 |
src/Controller/Groups/GroupsIndexController.php — deprecated since Sep 2020 |
src/Controller/Groups/GroupsViewController.php — deprecated since Sep 2020 |
Security & Reliability Posture
adequate34 vendored components with no licence
adequateThird-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.
webroot/img/third_party/ChromeWebStore.png — 1 tracked files, no licence file |
webroot/img/third_party/ChromeWebStore_black.png — 1 tracked files, no licence file |
webroot/img/third_party/ChromeWebStore_black.svg — 1 tracked files, no licence file |
webroot/img/third_party/ChromeWebStore_white.png — 1 tracked files, no licence file |
webroot/img/third_party/ChromeWebStore_white.svg — 1 tracked files, no licence file |
webroot/img/third_party/FirefoxAMO_black.svg — 1 tracked files, no licence file |
8 files are named as enterprise-edition code
adequateFiles named `.ee.` are, by the common open-core convention, the paid edition's code, usually under a licence that is not open source even where the rest is. What the buyer may do with each part differs.
plugins/PassboltEe/Ee/config/bootstrap.php — enterprise-edition file |
plugins/PassboltEe/Ee/config/config.php — enterprise-edition file |
plugins/PassboltEe/Ee/src/EePlugin.php — enterprise-edition file |
1 advisory against this project in the last 24 months
adequateThe newest was published on 2025-03-10. 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 1 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 5.17.0. Answer lives in: the release you run, set against each fixed version.
| 2025-03-10: CVE-2025-27913 (low): Passbolt API before 5, if the server is misconfigured (with an incorrect installation process and disregarding of Health Check results), can send email messages |
Observability & Operations
adequateNo structured logging library is in use
adequateNothing references a structured logging library. Logs that are written to be read by a person are not searchable by a machine, which means incident response here is proportional to how well someone remembers the codebase rather than to what the tooling can find.
| searched 3,690 files for 10 structured logging libraries; 0 matched |
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 |
Fit with the Acquirer
not assessableNot rated: structurally not assessable from a repository.
Read more, or read your own
The full report on passbolt/passbolt_api: every dimension, the questions for the room, and the audit log.
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