Borehole · Project · free tier
passbolt/passbolt_api
Free reading: not for reliance
5de65b8 · 34,317 commits · 4,487 files
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.

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

What the repository says

  • plugins/PassboltEe/Ee/config/bootstrap.php: 8 files are named as enterprise-edition code

Architecture & Codebase — including AI provenance

strong
01.6

plugins/PassboltEe/Scim/src/Utility/Resource/UserScimResource.php is 1,145 lines, 13× this codebase's median file

adequate

The 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.

Engineering Process & SDLC Maturity

strong

No finding.

Product & Engineering Maturity

strong
04.5

Effort is shifting from building to rewriting

adequate

Deleted 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.

Evidence
first half 0.64, second half 1.07 (split 2016-02-01)
04.38

32 files still carry code deprecated more than two years ago

adequate

32 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.

Evidence
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

adequate
05.9

34 vendored components with no licence

adequate

Third-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.

Evidence
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
05.61

8 files are named as enterprise-edition code

adequate

Files 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.

Evidence
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
05.65

1 advisory against this project in the last 24 months

adequate

The 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.

Evidence
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

adequate
06.2

No structured logging library is in use

adequate

Nothing 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.

Evidence
searched 3,690 files for 10 structured logging libraries; 0 matched
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

Fit with the Acquirer

not assessable

Not 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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