767c4c9 · 1,126 commits · 271 files
Issued 2026-10-04
Nothing significant. Questions worth asking about Security & Reliability Posture, Engineering Process & SDLC Maturity.
104 checks ran across 6 assessable dimensions. None found a significant problem; 3 raised something worth a question. 8 findings, each with evidence. One dimension cannot be assessed without an acquirer.
- 1 finding from checks Borehole's calibration found wrong more often than right is no longer published.
| Dimension | Rating | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Architecture & Codebase — including AI provenance | strong | |
| 02 | Engineering Process & SDLC Maturity | adequate | |
| 03 | Organization & Key-Person Risk | not assessable | |
| 04 | Product & Engineering Maturity | adequate | |
| 05 | Security & Reliability Posture | adequate | |
| 06 | Observability & Operations | not assessable | |
| 07 | Fit with the Acquirer | not assessable |
- 1% of non-merge commits carry any trailer at all
- low trailer coverage: the convention may not be in consistent use
- 41% of commits show author/committer date divergence, which is the shape of replayed history that can drop trailers
- deep scan blamed 270 of 270 counted files
Architecture & Codebase — including AI provenance
01 · strong · ratings ↑crc32.h is 9,447 lines, 39× this codebase's median file
adequateThe median source file here is 238 lines. 1 file exceed 2,380 lines, the largest being 9,447. 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.
A note that does not affect this rating: measured against its own codebase's median, it is below the 85th percentile of 382 surveyed projects' largest files, where this check begins to count.
| line-count | crc32.h:1 — 9,447 lines (39× median) |
Respond to this finding
Your response is published beside the finding, not instead of it. A finding you can argue with is the point — and a wrong one is calibration data we want.
An owner's response is removed only when it is unlawful, impersonates someone, publishes personal data or a credential, or is not about the finding. Disagreeing with the report is never a reason. To report a response, or to reach us about one, write to takedown@borehole.dev.
Engineering Process & SDLC Maturity
02 · adequate · ratings ↑Tests cover a thin slice of the codebase
adequate8 test files against 113 source files (7.1%). 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.
| test-file-ratio | 8 test files / 113 source files |
Respond to this finding
Your response is published beside the finding, not instead of it. A finding you can argue with is the point — and a wrong one is calibration data we want.
An owner's response is removed only when it is unlawful, impersonates someone, publishes personal data or a credential, or is not about the finding. Disagreeing with the report is never a reason. To report a response, or to reach us about one, write to takedown@borehole.dev.
Almost no process scaffolding exists in the repository
adequateOf five ordinary markers — CI workflows, CODEOWNERS, a pull-request template, pre-commit hooks, contribution guidance — 1 is present: CI workflows. Branch protection itself is a GitHub setting rather than a file, so this is a reading of proxies and not of the rules themselves. What it does establish is that the process is not written down anywhere a new engineer would find it.
A note that does not affect this rating: in Borehole's calibration, this check's notes were usually true but overstated.
| process-scaffolding | 1 of 5 markers present across 271 tracked files |
Respond to this finding
Your response is published beside the finding, not instead of it. A finding you can argue with is the point — and a wrong one is calibration data we want.
An owner's response is removed only when it is unlawful, impersonates someone, publishes personal data or a credential, or is not about the finding. Disagreeing with the report is never a reason. To report a response, or to reach us about one, write to takedown@borehole.dev.
Organization & Key-Person Risk
03 · not assessable · ratings ↑Not rated: this repository belongs to a person rather than an organisation, so a finding about one contributor would be about someone the address names; the public report does not carry those, and does not rate this dimension without them. What a person adds here.
Product & Engineering Maturity
04 · adequate · ratings ↑15% of bug fixes add or change a test
adequateOf 55 fixes in the last 24 months, 8 touched a test. A fix without the test that would have caught the bug can quietly come back, and the suite never learns from what went wrong.
| fix commits touching tests | 8 of 55 |
Respond to this finding
Your response is published beside the finding, not instead of it. A finding you can argue with is the point — and a wrong one is calibration data we want.
An owner's response is removed only when it is unlawful, impersonates someone, publishes personal data or a credential, or is not about the finding. Disagreeing with the report is never a reason. To report a response, or to reach us about one, write to takedown@borehole.dev.
Effort is shifting from building to rewriting
adequateDeleted lines per line added rose from 0.58 to 0.85 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.
A note that does not affect this rating: in Borehole's calibration, this check's notes were usually true but overstated.
| deletions-per-insertion | first half 0.58, second half 0.85 (split 2019-01-24) |
Respond to this finding
Your response is published beside the finding, not instead of it. A finding you can argue with is the point — and a wrong one is calibration data we want.
An owner's response is removed only when it is unlawful, impersonates someone, publishes personal data or a credential, or is not about the finding. Disagreeing with the report is never a reason. To report a response, or to reach us about one, write to takedown@borehole.dev.
Security & Reliability Posture
05 · adequate · ratings ↑None of the standard security guard rails are configured
adequateThere is no disclosure policy, no automated dependency updates, no named code owners and no pre-commit configuration. None of these is load-bearing on its own. Their collective absence says that security posture here is whatever the current team happens to remember to do, which is not a posture that survives the team changing.
| guardrail-scan | checked 5 kinds of guard rail across 271 tracked files; 0 present |
Respond to this finding
Your response is published beside the finding, not instead of it. A finding you can argue with is the point — and a wrong one is calibration data we want.
An owner's response is removed only when it is unlawful, impersonates someone, publishes personal data or a credential, or is not about the finding. Disagreeing with the report is never a reason. To report a response, or to reach us about one, write to takedown@borehole.dev.
The build runs third-party code it does not pin
adequate11 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.
A note that does not affect this rating: notes like it are common in well-run projects.
| .github/workflows/fuzz.yml | .github/workflows/fuzz.yml:8 — action pinned by tag |
| .github/workflows/fuzz.yml | .github/workflows/fuzz.yml:14 — action pinned by tag |
Respond to this finding
Your response is published beside the finding, not instead of it. A finding you can argue with is the point — and a wrong one is calibration data we want.
An owner's response is removed only when it is unlawful, impersonates someone, publishes personal data or a credential, or is not about the finding. Disagreeing with the report is never a reason. To report a response, or to reach us about one, write to takedown@borehole.dev.
4 advisories against this project in the last 24 months, 2 high or critical
adequateThe newest was published on 2026-09-03. 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 3 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 1.3.2. Answer lives in: the release you run, set against each fixed version. The record is incomplete: NVD: 36 records name zlib with nothing tying them to this repository (CVE-2002-0059, CVE-2003-0107, CVE-2004-0797, …).
A note that does not affect this rating: it describes the project's advisory record, and no advisory in it is known to affect the surveyed commit.
| CVE-2026-85091 | 2026-09-03: CVE-2026-85091 (high): zlib versions 1.3.1.2 through 1.3.2 contain a heap buffer overflow vulnerability in the gz_vacate() function when processing non-blocking gzwrite() operations w |
| CVE-2026-76844 | 2026-08-24: CVE-2026-76844 (high): zlib 1.2.11 through 1.3.2 contains a heap buffer overflow: after an underlying write() fails, gz_write() returns without resetting strm.next_in, leaving it poin |
| CVE-2026-27171 | 2026-02-18: CVE-2026-27171 (low): zlib before 1.3.2 allows CPU consumption via crc32_combine64 and crc32_combine_gen64 because x2nmodp can do right shifts within a loop that has no termination c |
| CVE-2026-22184 | 2026-01-07: CVE-2026-22184 (moderate): zlib versions up to and including 1.3.1.2 include a global buffer overflow in the untgz utility located under contrib/untgz. The vulnerability is limited to the |
Respond to this finding
Your response is published beside the finding, not instead of it. A finding you can argue with is the point — and a wrong one is calibration data we want.
An owner's response is removed only when it is unlawful, impersonates someone, publishes personal data or a credential, or is not about the finding. Disagreeing with the report is never a reason. To report a response, or to reach us about one, write to takedown@borehole.dev.
Observability & Operations
06 · not assessable · ratings ↑Not rated: only 4 of 16 checks could reach a conclusion here; the rest do not apply to this repository or could not read it. What a person adds here.
Fit with the Acquirer
07 · not assessable · ratings ↑Not rated: structurally not assessable from a repository. What a person adds here.
Check it on the running system
3 checks against the running system follow from the findings above: what a buyer's engineer will try, how to run it first, and what to have ready. A paid survey of this repository includes them.
A paid survey of a public repository is also reviewed: a language model reads each finding against the code and withdraws only findings it judges the code contradicts, each listed with its reason. The review is a language model's reading of the findings against the code, and it can be wrong. It never adds a finding, never raises a band, and never removes a finding from a proven check or an advisory that affects the surveyed version.
What a person adds
The survey reads what the repository can show. The code cannot settle these questions, and on them this report states nothing. Each says where its answer lives: your own engineer, the company, or an assessor you choose can settle it. Questions marked measured open with something this repository shows.
Architecture & Codebase — including AI provenance
01 · full coverage- measured No architecture or design document is in the tree, across 200 product files. Where does the design live, and who holds it?
- Is the architecture right for the next three years of the product?
- Were the home-grown components reasonable choices when they were made, and are they now?
Engineering Process & SDLC Maturity
02 · high coverage- Is review real or a rubber stamp? Comment depth and time to approve need the pull request history.
- Is delivery planned and measured, or heroic?
- How are incidents run, reviewed and learned from?
Organization & Key-Person Risk
03 · partial coverageNot rated: this repository belongs to a person rather than an organisation, so a finding about one contributor would be about someone the address names; the public report does not carry those, and does not rate this dimension without them.
- Which of the people who wrote this are part of the transaction, and for how long after it?
- Where was the work of that period done, and is it in this history? The history shows the gap, not why it happened.
- Who mentors whom, and would that survive a departure?
- Can the team grow, and who stands behind the top three contributors?
- Is the seniority mix sound, and will pay survive your salary bands?
- Is the pace sustainable? Commit times cannot say: git keeps no reliable local time.
- Does the team want to stay after close?
- How are decisions made and disagreements resolved?
Product & Engineering Maturity
04 · minimal coverage- measured 281 commits landed in the last year, against 140 the year before (+101%). What drove it: new people, a deadline, or code produced faster than before?
- Can this team deliver the stated roadmap on the stated timeline?
- Does leadership know about the debt, and is time budgeted to repay it?
- Is the engineering shape consistent with the commercial story?
Security & Reliability Posture
05 · partial coverage- What has actually broken, how often, and how badly?
- What did external testing find, and was it fixed?
- What is the SOC 2, ISO 27001 or GDPR status, and where is the evidence?
Observability & Operations
06 · partial coverageNot rated: only 4 of 16 checks could reach a conclusion here; the rest do not apply to this repository or could not read it.
- Are the dashboards opened, the alerts acknowledged and the pages answered?
- Are the service-level objectives actually met?
- Who carries the pager, and how often does it go off?
- What does it cost to run, and how much headroom is there?
Fit with the Acquirer
07 · none coverageNot rated: structurally not assessable from a repository.
- This is primarily a C codebase. Does your engineering organisation already run C in production, or would this be the first?
- The bulk of this system sits in contrib/, win32/, os400/. Which of your existing systems would each of those have to absorb or replace?
- Nothing in the repository says how this is deployed. Is it shipped as a library, a binary or a service, and if it runs somewhere, who owns that environment?
- What is your tolerance for the findings above remaining unaddressed for the first two quarters after close, given everything else that will compete for this team's time?
- Which of these systems duplicate yours, and which get retired?
- What will integration cost, and in what order?
- Where does the team land in your organisation, and who reports to whom?
- Are there earn-outs, retention packages or contractor IP to assign?
- Do customer contracts limit hosting, regions or vendors?
A human assessment is Borehole's own paid service, €12,000+ (total price is determined per engagement; travel billed at cost). It is not independent of this report: the same business produced both. It is a separate contract, with its own scope, terms and reliance.
Embed the badge
Tied to this commit and this date, and it fades after 90 days — an honest badge is one that expires. A repository with significant findings gets a neutral "read" badge rather than a red one: the library is where the range is visible, not someone else's README.
[](/r/madler/zlib/767c4c9)If you embed it: link it to the report, remove it if the report is delisted, and do not present it as a certification or an endorsement.
Rejection log — 96 signals that ran and did not fire
Appendix: rejection log — 96 signals that ran and did not fire
Published on purpose. A signal that looked and decided not to fire has told you something, and this is the calibration data behind every threshold above.
Looked, and found nothing — 49
| Signal | What it found |
|---|---|
| 04.hotspot_concentration | change is spread across the codebase rather than pooling in a few filesfiles 677 · top5 share 0.132 |
| 04.debt_markers | debt markers are sparsemarkers 2 · per kloc 0.03 · lines read 60,599 |
| 04.test_growth | test effort kept pace with code writtenlate test per code 0.02 · early test per code 0.009 |
| 06.telemetry_presence | this repository does not deploy a running service, so instrumentation is not expected of itbasis nothing in this repository deploys a long-running server; if it runs as one, its deployment lives elsewhere · files read 173 |
| 06.healthcheck_presence | not a running service, so a health endpoint is not expectedbasis nothing in this repository deploys a long-running server; if it runs as one, its deployment lives elsewhere |
| 06.usage_reporting_default | the product's code names no reporting hostsettings on 0 · settings off 0 |
| 06.migrate_on_start | migrations do not run at container start |
| 03.active_contributors | withheld: this check's result would describe one person |
| 03.knowledge_silos | withheld: this check's result would describe one person |
| 03.drive_by_contributors | withheld: this check's result would describe one person |
| 03.contributor_attrition | withheld: this check's result would describe one person |
| 03.critical_path_ownership | withheld: this check's result would describe one person |
| 03.second_contributor_attrition | withheld: this check's result would describe one person |
| 03.bus_factor_trend | withheld: this check's result would describe one person |
| 02.merge_discipline | a meaningful share of recent change carries evidence of reviewmerges 0 · window last 24 months · with tracked 0 |
| 02.ci_presence | CI configuration is present in the working treecount 7 |
| 02.release_cadence | tags are presenttags 78 |
| 02.conventional_commits | commit subjects generally carry contentsampled 1,126 · low content share 0.036 |
| 02.ci_runs_tests | CI invokes a test runnerconfigs 7 · with tests 6 |
| 02.skipped_tests | few tests are switched offfocused 0 · skipped 0 · test files 45 |
| 02.ci_test_gating | no test run in CI is written so that it cannot failconfigs 7 |
| 02.revert_share | change is rarely undoneshare 0.0 · reverts 0 · recent commits 421 |
| 02.flaky_test_markers | tests are not retried until they passtest retries 0 · suite retries 0 |
| 02.commit_size | changes arrive in reviewable sizesshare 0.003 · commits 393 · over 2000 lines 1 |
| 01.burst_import | commit runs were found but none was additive enough to be an import; the largest looks like a reformat or a replayed historygap seconds 180 · min add ratio 3.0 · min net added 2,000 |
| 01.initial_dump | first commit is not a disproportionate share of the codebaseinsertions 6,146 · share of insertions 0.0315 |
| 01.message_uniformity | commit subjects vary in wording and lengthlength stdev 15.93 · repeat share 0.005 |
| 01.revision_depth | most files were revisited after they were first writtenfiles seen 199 · write once share 0.191 |
| 01.duplicated_blocks | little shipping code is repeated verbatim across filesshare 0.0132 · product files 99 · distinct blocks 28,913 |
| 01.unfinished_migration | no language migration is stalled halfway |
| 01.weights_in_git | no model weights are committedfiles 0 |
| 05.committed_secrets | no credential-shaped strings outside test and fixture pathsnote the working tree only; the history is 05.5 · patterns 8 · files read 173 |
| 05.license_present | a licence file is presentfound True |
| 05.secrets_in_history | no credential-shaped string was ever added outside test and fixture pathspatterns 8 · truncated False · added lines 172,099 |
| 05.secrets_management_pattern | no environment file is committed outside tests and examplesenv files 0 |
| 05.privileged_workloads | no workload runs privileged or in the host's namespacessites 0 · behind a setting or built here 0 |
| 05.credentials_in_deploy_config | deployment configuration references secrets, never holds themfiles 0 · sites 0 |
| 05.signing_material | no signing keystore or profile is committedfiles 0 |
| 05.license_vendored_unlicensed | no vendored third-party code is committedcomponents 0 |
| 05.license_grant_unclear | the licence is recognisable as Zlibclass permissive · license Zlib |
| 05.committed_native_libraries | no widely used compiled library is committed to the productlibraries 0 |
| 04.ci_platforms_dropped | no platform was dropped from CI in the last two years |
| 04.repository_status | the README's first screen states no end, move or freezestatements 0 |
| 02.development_elsewhere | nothing says development happens elsewhereno pr statements 0 · mirror statements 0 · replayed commit share 0.0 |
| 05.licence_changes | the root licence has not changed in the history readlicence versions 1 · unreleased changes 0 |
| 05.paid_edition | no directory carries a separate paid-edition licencedirectories 0 |
| 04.releases_stopped | releases keep pace with developmentmedian gap days 113.5 · days since last tag 229 · commits last 90 days 24 |
| 04.release_branch | the newest release was cut from the branch surveyedelsewhere 0 · on branch 42 · tags in window 42 |
| 03.single_maintainer | withheld: this check's result would describe one person |
Could not conclude, or did not apply — 47
Not a clean result. Each says why it could not answer here.
| Signal | Why |
|---|---|
| 04.dependency_sprawl | no recognised dependency manifest found |
| 04.eol_runtime | no pinned runtime version to check |
| 04.fix_share_trend | fewer than six busy quarters to compare |
| 04.schema_churn | no schema migrations to read |
| 04.compat_layers | a library, whose compatibility code is usually deliberate |
| 04.dependency_redundancy | no JavaScript manifest to read |
| 06.structured_logging | not assessed for C, the language the product is written in: this check's patterns read other languages only |
| 06.telemetry_depth | not expected of it: nothing in this repository deploys a long-running server; if it runs as one, its deployment lives elsewhere |
| 06.print_logging | not expected of it: nothing in this repository deploys a long-running server; if it runs as one, its deployment lives elsewhere |
| 06.correlation_ids | not expected of it: nothing in this repository deploys a long-running server; if it runs as one, its deployment lives elsewhere |
| 06.error_reporting | not expected of it: nothing in this repository deploys a long-running server; if it runs as one, its deployment lives elsewhere |
| 06.alert_rules | not expected of it: nothing in this repository deploys a long-running server; if it runs as one, its deployment lives elsewhere |
| 06.deployed_image_floats | not expected of it: nothing in this repository deploys a long-running server; if it runs as one, its deployment lives elsewhere |
| 06.probes_identical | no Kubernetes probes |
| 06.single_replica | no Kubernetes deployments |
| 06.environment_branching | not expected of it: nothing in this repository deploys a long-running server; if it runs as one, its deployment lives elsewhere |
| 06.release_markers | not expected of it: nothing in this repository deploys a long-running server; if it runs as one, its deployment lives elsewhere |
| 06.feature_flags | no feature-flag service; flags may live elsewhere |
| 03.joiners_and_leavers | withheld: this check's result would describe one person |
| 02.dependency_update_cadence | no lockfile to date |
| 02.long_lived_branches | too few merges to judge (squash and rebase leave none) |
| 01.swallowed_errors | not assessed for C, the language the product is written in: this check's patterns read other languages only |
| 01.build_reproducibility | no product Dockerfile to read |
| 01.notebook_outputs | not a data or machine-learning repository |
| 05.dependency_pinning | no manifest whose pinning can be read without a lockfile |
| 05.container_runs_as_root | no Dockerfile to read |
| 05.outbound_timeouts | not a running service |
| 05.migration_reversibility | too few migrations to judge |
| 05.sql_from_strings | not a running service; a library that builds SQL is doing its job |
| 05.shell_from_strings | not assessed for C, the language the product is written in: this check's patterns read other languages only |
| 05.unsafe_deserialization | not assessed for C, the language the product is written in: this check's patterns read other languages only |
| 05.tls_verification_off | not assessed for C, the language the product is written in: this check's patterns read other languages only |
| 05.resource_limits | no Kubernetes workload manifests |
| 05.known_vulnerabilities | not assessed for NuGet: this survey does not read their dependency files |
| 05.public_env_secret | not a frontend |
| 05.unsafe_html | not a frontend |
| 05.source_maps_shipped | not a frontend |
| 05.cleartext_traffic | not a mobile app |
| 05.dataset_provenance | not a data or machine-learning repository |
| 05.license_copyleft_inherited | no third-party code is committed to this repository, so the licences it depends on are resolved at build time and are not readable here |
| 05.license_manifest_conflict | no packaging manifest states a licence |
| 04.flags_accumulating | few or no feature flags in the history |
| 04.api_versions_coexisting | not a running service |
| 04.deprecations_lingering | a library, which keeps deprecated interfaces for its users |
| 04.dependency_churn | few dependencies were added and dropped within 60 days |
| 05.project_advisories | record incomplete: no advisory found in the sources that answered; NVD: 36 records name zlib with nothing tying them to this repository (CVE-2002-0059, CVE-2003-0107, CVE-2004-0797, …) |
| 05.project_exploited | no affecting advisory is on CISA's Known Exploited list |
Anyone can check this report against the authoritative record — click the stamp, or enter CEK0-EW0D-268K at borehole.dev/verify.
The code commits to the 105 checks this run performed, the bands they produced, and the commit they were read at. It does not cover checks written since.
Put the mark in your README
The image is wrapped in a link to the verification page, so a reader can check it rather than take it on trust. If you embed it: link it to the report, remove it if the report is delisted, and do not present it as a certification or an endorsement.
[](https://borehole.dev/verify/CEK0EW0D268K?via=badge)
A survey is a reading by a particular version of the assessor. Older readings are kept rather than replaced, because a verification mark attests to the survey it was issued for — overwriting one would make every code already in circulation read as tampered.
| Read | Assessor | Findings | Band |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-04 · shown | borehole 0.7.13 | 9 | adequate |
4 earlier (show)
| 2026-10-03 | borehole 0.7.12 | 9 | adequate |
| 2026-10-03 | borehole 0.7.11 | 9 | adequate |
| 2026-10-02 | borehole 0.7.10 | 9 | adequate |
| 2026-10-01 | borehole 0.7.9 | 9 | adequate |
Where this scan ran
This scan ran on ordinary cloud infrastructure (cloud-run), not in a hardware-isolated confidential VM. Nothing about it is attested by Google.
What an attested survey proves, and what it does not.
What this scan did with the repository — 4 steps
Written by the steps themselves as they ran, not described afterwards. A hand-written account of a data flow drifts the first time somebody changes the flow and not the account.
| At | Step | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| 0.0s | re-read from the facts kept at the last survey; nothing was cloned | facts version: 1d7c04ef8dca7905 |
| 4.6s | ran the deterministic checks | blame pass: Trueread working tree: False |
| 4.6s | withheld findings about one contributor: the owner is a person | withheld: 1owner kind: person |
| 4.6s | recorded where this scan ran | attested: Falseenvironment: cloud-run |
Total 4.6s ·source content sent off this machine: none · calls to a language model: 0 · the clone was deleted when the survey ended
An automated reading of a repository's code and its history up to one commit, with public advisory records. It may be wrong, it is not legal, financial, investment or security advice, and it does not replace diligence by a qualified person. It is provided for information: nobody may rely on it (Borehole's terms, section 3).