Skip to content

SECURITY.md

Latest commit

 

History

History
103 lines (77 loc) · 5.57 KB

SECURITY.md

File metadata and controls

103 lines (77 loc) · 5.57 KB
Raw

Security Policy

Thank you for helping keep GitCat and its users safe.

Reporting a vulnerability

Please do not report security vulnerabilities through public GitHub issues, discussions, or pull requests.

Report privately through GitHub's built-in flow:

  1. Go to the Security tab of this repository.
  2. Click Report a vulnerability to open a private advisory (this is only visible to you and the maintainer).

If you can't use GitHub's private reporting, email git.jiucheng@gmail.com with the subject line GitCat security.

Please include:

  • The GitCat version (Help → About, or the app window title).
  • Your OS and architecture (e.g. macOS 14 arm64, Windows 11 x64, Ubuntu 24.04 x64).
  • A description of the issue and its impact.
  • Step-by-step reproduction, and a proof of concept if you have one.

What to expect

  • Acknowledgement within 5 days.
  • An initial assessment within 10 days, and regular updates while we work on a fix.
  • Once a fix ships, we'll credit you in the release notes and the advisory unless you'd prefer to stay anonymous.

Please give us a reasonable window to release a fix before any public disclosure. We aim to resolve confirmed issues within 90 days.

Scope

GitCat is a local desktop Git client. It runs Git operations against repositories you already have on disk and does not connect to any AI service or send your code anywhere. Areas of particular interest:

  • Command/argument injection through crafted repository data (branch/tag/remote names, .gitmodules, submodule URLs, config values, file paths).
  • Path traversal or writes outside the selected working tree.
  • Anything that lets untrusted repository content execute code or escape the WebView (Tauri IPC surface, the Content-Security-Policy).
  • Mishandling of credentials or the WSL command-routing path.

Plugins

GitCat plugins are small declarative plugin.json manifests that contribute commands (surfaced in the ⌘K palette / context menus) and hooks (run on lifecycle events such as repo opened or post-mutation). Each declares a run string that GitCat expands and executes.

Trust boundary — a plugin runs code on your machine. A plugin's run string is user-authored shell text that GitCat executes on your computer, exactly like a difftool/mergetool cmd or a commit-message command you configure. Installing a plugin is trusting whoever wrote it, the same as trusting any shell script you choose to run. GitCat contacts no AI service and no network on a plugin's behalf; whatever a plugin does lives entirely inside its own run string and runs with your user's privileges. Only install plugins you trust and have read.

Values GitCat substitutes into a run template — a branch/tag/ref name, a file path, a repo path, diff content — come from the repository you have open, which a malicious project can craft freely. GitCat single-quotes every substituted value so the shell treats it as one inert literal (a branch literally named ; rm -rf ~ cannot start a new command). Note the limits below.

Undo coverage: declare mutates. A command or hook that changes the repository should set "mutates": true. When it does, GitCat takes a safety snapshot before running it, so the change is covered by global Undo — the same protection GitCat's own mutations get. A mutates: false action (the default) is treated as read-only and is not snapshotted. Consequently, an action that changes the repository but does not declare mutates runs outside Undo and cannot be rolled back through GitCat. GitCat cannot infer this from an opaque run string, so plugin authors must set mutates on anything that mutates the repo. For a user-invoked command GitCat fails closed — if the pre-mutation snapshot cannot be taken, the command does not run; for a lifecycle hook (an observer that must not stall the event) a failed snapshot causes that one hook to be logged and skipped.

Windows quoting is fail-closed, not bulletproof. GitCat's value-quoting is POSIX single-quoting, which fully neutralizes untrusted values under the unix shell (sh -c). Windows runs cmd /C, which does not honor that quoting, so on Windows GitCat refuses to run a command whose substituted values contain a cmd.exe metacharacter (& | < > ^ % ! ", or a newline) rather than risk injection. This intentionally rejects some legitimate values (including most {diff} content) on Windows until a bundled POSIX shell lands.

Flag/argument injection is not covered by quoting. Single-quoting stops shell-metacharacter injection but does not change argument boundaries: an untrusted value that begins with - (a branch named --upload-pack=…, a ref -n) is still delivered to the invoked tool as an option. Plugin authors should put a -- end-of-options separator before untrusted placeholders (e.g. git checkout -- {branch}); quoting alone cannot fix this generically.

Environment inheritance. A plugin subprocess inherits GitCat's full environment; GitCat does not clear or curate it. This is acceptable under the "you trust the plugin you installed" model, but note it if you keep secrets in GitCat's environment.

Supported versions

GitCat is pre-1.0; security fixes land in the latest release only. Please make sure you're on the newest version before reporting.

Version Supported
latest 0.9.x ✅
older ❌

Tip: enable Private vulnerability reporting under Settings → Code security and analysis so the "Report a vulnerability" button above is available to everyone.