Read 2026-10-23
smallstep/cli: technical due diligence, read from its repository
What Borehole read in smallstep/cli's code and history at 9c05f5c: 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 | adequate |
| Engineering Process & SDLC Maturity | strong |
| Product & Engineering Maturity | strong |
| Security & Reliability Posture | adequate |
| Observability & Operations | adequate |
| Fit with the Acquirer | not assessable |
Architecture & Codebase — including AI provenance
adequatecommand/oauth/cmd.go is 1,325 lines, 10× this codebase's median file
adequateThe median source file here is 122 lines. 1 file exceed 1,220 lines, the largest being 1,325. 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.
command/oauth/cmd.go:1 — 1,325 lines (10× median) |
1 base image floats: no version, or `latest`
adequate1 of 2 `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.
docker/Dockerfile:22 — base image without a version |
Engineering Process & SDLC Maturity
strongNo finding.
Product & Engineering Maturity
strongEffort is shifting from building to rewriting
adequateDeleted lines per line added rose from 0.54 to 1.94 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 0.54, second half 1.94 (split 2022-09-03) |
Security & Reliability Posture
adequate1 credential-shaped string committed to the tree
adequateMatches for Google OAuth client secret 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. 6 other matchs set aside: expired tokens, licence tokens a vendor verifies with a public key, or placeholder text where a key would go. None grants access to anything.
| Google OAuth client secret pattern matched |
The build runs third-party code it does not pin
adequate7 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.
.github/workflows/actionci.yml:21 — action pinned by tag |
.github/workflows/ci.yml:25 — action pinned by tag |
4 outbound calls can wait forever
adequate4 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.
command/certificate/verify.go:267 — outbound call without a timeout |
command/crl/inspect.go:125 — outbound call without a timeout |
command/oauth/cmd.go:695 — outbound call without a timeout |
Observability & Operations
adequateThe service logs with print: 156 calls against 0 logger calls
adequate156 `print` or `console.log` calls in the service's code, and 0 calls through a logger. Printed lines carry no level and no context, cannot be switched off, and are hard to find again in production.
command/api/token/create.go:142 — print used for logging |
command/base64/base64.go:113 — print used for logging |
command/ca/acme/eab/list.go:142 — print used for logging |
One request cannot be followed through the logs
adequateNothing 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.
| no request id, correlation id or tracing found |
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.
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