As an Apex Project, security is paramount. This repository adheres to the Zero-Defect philosophy and expects all contributors to follow modern security best practices suitable for December 2025 standards.

We actively maintain and patch security issues for the latest stable release branch of the Python interpreter (currently targeting Python 3.12+ environment standards) and associated dependencies managed by uv.

If you discover any security vulnerability within this project, please follow these steps immediately. DO NOT report vulnerabilities in public issues or pull requests.

1. Private Disclosure: Email the security team directly at security@apex-architect.dev (This is a placeholder; use a dedicated security contact if available, otherwise direct to maintainer: chirag127@users.noreply.github.com).
2. Provide Details: Include a clear description of the vulnerability, the affected file(s) or component(s), steps to reproduce the issue, and the potential impact.
3. Wait for Response: We will acknowledge receipt of your report, typically within 48 hours.

Upon receiving a security report, the Apex Technical Authority initiates the following triage:

1. Validation: Attempt to reproduce the issue based on your steps.
2. Remediation: Develop a patch utilizing Ruff for automated static analysis checks and Pytest for integration testing to ensure regression prevention.
3. Patch Deployment: Once a fix is verified internally, we will prepare a private release candidate for security patch testing.
4. Public Disclosure: After the fix has been merged into the main branch and a new release is tagged, we will coordinate a public disclosure timeline, giving users reasonable time to update.

Given this is a Python-based toolkit utilizing modern dependency management (uv), supply chain integrity is critical:

• Dependency Auditing: We rely on automated scanning via GitHub's Dependabot alerts to monitor for known vulnerabilities (CVEs) in third-party libraries.
• Pinning: Where appropriate and necessary for stability, exact version pinning is used to prevent unexpected breakage from upstream changes, balancing this with the need to apply security updates promptly.
• Static Analysis: The CI pipeline (.github/workflows/ci.yml) runs comprehensive checks using Ruff in its strict configuration to catch common security pitfalls (e.g., insecure deserialization patterns, dependency misuse).

All contributions must align with the security directives outlined in AGENTS.md:

• Principle Adherence: All new code must uphold DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself) and SOLID principles, which inherently promote maintainability and reduce surface area for bugs.
• No Secrets: Under no circumstances should API keys, passwords, or sensitive configurations be hardcoded. Use environment variables exclusively, as mandated by the Apex Architectural Patterns.

Last Updated: December 2025