Read 2026-11-03
zarf-dev/zarf: technical due diligence, read from its repository
What Borehole read in zarf-dev/zarf's code and history at f8e60d0: 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 |
What the repository says
README.md:6: names OpenSSF
Architecture & Codebase — including AI provenance
adequatesrc/cmd/package.go is 2,470 lines, 17× this codebase's median file
adequateThe median source file here is 144 lines. 1 file exceed 1,440 lines, the largest being 2,470. 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/cmd/package.go:1 — 2,470 lines (17× median) |
1 base image floats: no version, or `latest`
adequate1 of 1 `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.
Dockerfile:1 — base image without a version |
1 model weight file committed directly to git
adequate1 model weight files are stored in git itself, not in LFS, DVC or a model hub. Every clone carries them, the history keeps every version for good, and nothing records which run or data produced them.
vendor/sigs.k8s.io/kustomize/kyaml/openapi/kubernetesapi/v1_21_2/swagger.pb — weights in git |
Engineering Process & SDLC Maturity
strongNo finding.
Product & Engineering Maturity
strongNo finding.
Security & Reliability Posture
adequate2 environment files are committed
adequatevendor/github.com/subosito/gotenv/.env, vendor/github.com/subosito/gotenv/.env.invalid are tracked in git. Environment files are where credentials usually live, and committing one usually means nobody decided how secrets reach the running application. Whatever is in it is in the history for good. Check 05.1 says whether it holds anything credential-shaped.
vendor/github.com/subosito/gotenv/.env — committed environment file |
vendor/github.com/subosito/gotenv/.env.invalid — committed environment file |
9 locked dependencies have published vulnerabilities, 2 high or critical in what ships
adequate9 of 1,271 locked dependencies match 22 published advisories in OSV, 7 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. This lockfile pins development tools alongside what ships and does not say which is which, so some of these may never reach a user.
site/package-lock.json — dompurify 3.4.16: GHSA-cg2g-xh64-v4q7 (critical), fixed in 3.4.17 |
site/package-lock.json — undici 8.10.2: GHSA-2m5v-pch6-74hx (high), fixed in 8.12.2; reached only by the build |
site/package-lock.json — vite 8.1.4: GHSA-587h-7wmj-h5pm (high), fixed in 8.1.6; reached only by the build |
2 workload settings give a container the host
adequate2 places in the deployment configuration run a container privileged or in the host's network, process or IPC namespace. A compromise of that container is a compromise of the machine, and most acquirers' security reviews block it. Node agents (network, storage, monitoring) are excluded.
packages/init/v1alpha1/zarf-registry/chart/templates/injector-daemonset.yaml:70 — privileged or host namespace |
packages/init/v1alpha1/zarf-registry/chart/templates/proxy-daemonset.yaml:72 — privileged or host namespace |
2 advisories against this project in the last 24 months, 2 high or critical
adequateThe newest was published on 2026-04-14. 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.
| 2026-04-14: GHSA-pj97-4p9w-gx3q (high), fixed in 0.74.2: Zarf has a Path Traversal via Malicious Package Metadata.Name — Arbitrary File Write |
| 2026-03-06: GO-2026-4636 (high), fixed in 0.73.1: Zarf's symlink targets in archives are not validated against destination directory in github.com/zarf-dev/zarf |
Observability & Operations
adequateOne 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 |
Readiness and liveness probes are identical in 2 of 2 workloads
adequateBoth probes call the same endpoint. When a dependency slows down, the liveness probe fails with the readiness probe, so the platform restarts pods that only needed taking out of rotation, and a partial outage becomes a full one. Liveness should ask whether the process is alive; readiness whether it can serve.
packages/init/v1alpha1/zarf-agent/chart/templates/deployment.yaml — same probe endpoint twice |
packages/init/v1alpha1/zarf-registry/chart/templates/deployment.yaml — same probe endpoint twice |
Fit with the Acquirer
not assessableNot rated: structurally not assessable from a repository.
Read more, or read your own
The full report on zarf-dev/zarf: every dimension, the questions for the room, and the audit log.
Survey a repository: free on public repositories. Private code is read on your own machine by a collector whose source you can read first.