IMAGEHARDER is a security-focused media file hardening project designed to process images, audio, and video files with memory safety guarantees and defense-in-depth security measures. This document outlines our security practices, vulnerability disclosure process, and security commitments.

We provide security updates for the following versions:

1. Memory Safety: Pure Rust implementations eliminate entire classes of vulnerabilities (buffer overflows, use-after-free, double-free)
2. Kernel Isolation:
   • PID namespaces
   • Network namespaces
   • Mount namespaces
3. Syscall Filtering: Seccomp-BPF whitelists only required syscalls
4. Filesystem Restrictions: Landlock LSM limits file access to input files only
5. WebAssembly Sandboxing: FFmpeg runs in WASM sandbox with no host access
6. Hardware Acceleration Disabled: Prevents GPU-based exploits
7. Container Pre-validation: All video containers validated before codec processing

What We Protect Against:

• Malicious media files exploiting codec vulnerabilities
• VM escapes via crafted video files
• CPU desynchronization attacks
• Malware embedded in media metadata (PowerShell in MP3, etc.)
• Buffer overflows in image/audio/video parsers
• Arbitrary code execution via media processing
• Denial of service via resource exhaustion

What We Do NOT Protect Against:

• Social engineering attacks
• Compromised build toolchains (supply chain - see SBOM below)
• Physical access to hardware
• Side-channel attacks (timing, speculative execution)
• Attacks on the host kernel itself

DO NOT open a public GitHub issue for security vulnerabilities.

Instead, please report security issues privately via one of the following methods:

1. Email: security@[YOUR-DOMAIN] (PGP key below)
2. GitHub Security Advisory: Create a private security advisory

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
[Your PGP public key here]
-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

Please provide the following information in your report:

• Description: Clear description of the vulnerability
• Impact: What could an attacker achieve?
• Attack Vector: How would this be exploited?
• Proof of Concept: Steps to reproduce (or PoC code/file)
• Affected Versions: Which versions are vulnerable?
• Suggested Fix: If you have ideas for remediation

We are committed to the following response times:

We use the following severity levels based on CVSS v3.1:

1. Container Isolation: Always run in containers with read-only root filesystem
2. Resource Limits: Set CPU/memory limits (see kubernetes-deployment.yaml)
3. Network Policies: Restrict network access (only DNS)
4. Seccomp Profile: Apply the provided seccomp-profile.json
5. Regular Updates: Apply security patches within 7 days
6. Monitoring: Enable Prometheus metrics and configure alerts
7. File Quarantine: Isolate suspicious files for forensic analysis

1. Dependency Auditing: Run cargo audit before every release
2. Fuzzing: Run all fuzz targets for 24+ hours before releases
3. Static Analysis: Use cargo clippy with -D warnings
4. Memory Safety: Prefer pure Rust; avoid unsafe code
5. Input Validation: Validate all inputs at boundary (container, then codec)
6. Fail Closed: Always fail securely (reject on error)

We track all known vulnerabilities in our dependencies:

To check for vulnerabilities in dependencies:

cargo install cargo-audit
cargo audit

Security updates are released as:

• Patch releases for critical/high severity issues
• Minor releases for medium severity issues
• Regular releases for low severity issues

Subscribe to security announcements:

• Watch this repository for "Releases only"
• GitHub Security Advisories: https://github.com/SWORDIntel/IMAGEHARDER/security/advisories

We provide an SBOM (CycloneDX format) with each release:

cargo install cargo-cyclonedx
cargo cyclonedx --format json > sbom.json

• Only audited crates: All dependencies reviewed for security
• Minimal dependencies: Keep dependency tree small
• No C bindings preferred: Pure Rust implementations prioritized
• Pinned versions: Cargo.lock committed to repository
• Regular updates: Dependencies updated quarterly (sooner for CVEs)

Our builds are reproducible. Verify with:

cargo build --release
sha256sum target/release/image_harden_cli
# Compare against published checksums

In the event of a security incident:

1. Detection: Automated alerts via Prometheus/Grafana
2. Containment: Isolate affected systems, quarantine files
3. Investigation: Analyze logs, metrics, quarantined files
4. Remediation: Apply patches, update configurations
5. Recovery: Restore services, verify integrity
6. Lessons Learned: Post-mortem, update defenses

See PRODUCTION_DEPLOYMENT.md for detailed runbooks.

This project follows security best practices from:

• OWASP Top 10 (2021)
• CWE Top 25 Most Dangerous Software Weaknesses
• NIST Cybersecurity Framework
• CIS Benchmarks (Docker, Kubernetes)

1. Design: Threat modeling, security requirements
2. Development: Secure coding practices, code review
3. Testing: Unit tests, fuzz tests, integration tests
4. Deployment: Hardened containers, security monitoring
5. Maintenance: Vulnerability scanning, security updates

We run continuous fuzzing via GitHub Actions:

• 12 fuzz targets (images, audio, video)
• 35 minutes of fuzzing per CI run
• Corpus stored in test-corpus/

Run locally:

cargo install cargo-fuzz
cargo fuzz run fuzz_png -- -max_total_time=3600

We welcome responsible security research. If you'd like to perform security testing:

In Scope:

• Parsing of malformed/malicious media files
• Sandbox escapes (namespaces, seccomp, landlock)
• Resource exhaustion attacks
• Memory corruption attempts

Out of Scope:

• Social engineering
• Denial of service (DDoS)
• Physical attacks
• Third-party services

• Security Team: security@[YOUR-DOMAIN]
• Project Lead: [Your Name] - [email]
• Security Advisor: [Advisor Name] - [email] (if applicable)

We recognize security researchers who have responsibly disclosed vulnerabilities:

This security policy is inspired by:

• Rust Security Response WG
• GitHub's Security Policy Guide
• NIST SP 800-53

Last Updated: 2024-11-07

This security policy is a living document and will be updated as the project evolves.