2.5 KiB
Accepted security risks
Conscious security trade-offs we are choosing to live with — recorded so "what we are not doing" is explicit and revisitable, not forgotten. This register is a living document, deliberately kept out of ADR-002 (which records durable decisions) so the ADR stays stable.
Owned by ADR-002 (Security baseline and strategy). Re-challenged during the
periodic security review (planned /security-review; see docs/TODO.md).
Each entry: the risk · why we accept it (rationale) · what would make us revisit (trigger).
| # | Accepted risk | Rationale | Revisit trigger |
|---|---|---|---|
| R1 | Active supply-chain scanning deferred — baseline hygiene is required (tiered image pinning per ADR-011 — stateful tag@digest, stateless rolling — prefer official/verified images; gitleaks), but images and dependencies are not actively vulnerability-scanned (Trivy/Grype) or signature-verified |
Scanning only pays off with the capacity to triage its output; the realistic threat is opportunistic, not a targeted supply-chain attack | A monitoring/triage stack is live; hosting high-value data/finances for others; a relevant upstream compromise |
| R2 | SELinux not used — no SELinux mandatory access control | AppArmor — Debian-native and enforced via the CIS baseline — already provides MAC; adding SELinux means two MAC systems, non-native to Debian, for no real gain | A service that ships and requires its own SELinux policy; threat model shifts toward targeted attackers |
| R3 | Mesh-VPN coordinator dependency (pending VPN choice) — remote SSH to the control node ubongo (ADR-015) rides a mesh VPN whose coordination plane may be a third party (e.g. hosted Tailscale/NetBird) |
A hosted coordinator keeps the mesh up when the cluster is down, which helps recovery; nothing is exposed to the public internet (ADR-002 preserved). Provisional — finalised when the VPN is chosen (separate discussion) | The VPN choice is settled (replace this entry with the concrete decision); a self-hosted coordinator is adopted; the provider's trust/security posture changes |
Last reviewed: 2026-06-05. The prior gaps (full CIS hardening, SELinux/AppArmor,
IDS) were re-challenged and adopted rather than accepted: CIS Debian L1+L2 + CIS
Docker, AppArmor (enforce), AIDE file-integrity, and Suricata network IDS are now
part of the security strategy (ADR-002). See STATUS.md / docs/TODO.md for build
status. As CIS is implemented, any specific item that proves impractical is added
here as a named exception.