From 28548dcbde50f7cee471d6962e16115bb87b056f Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Christophe Besson Date: Sat, 12 Sep 2026 10:08:36 +0200 Subject: docs: AV9–AV12, and the two shapes that keep producing them MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit The register grows by the four findings from users.py, and gains the pattern underneath several of them: a limit written on one of several equivalent paths (three endpoints send mail, one had no limit; every list in admin.py is bounded, the two outside it were not; the group claim was bounded at registration and not on reload), and a bound that counts the wrong thing (a per-IP rate limit bounds a caller, never the mailbox that receives what they cause). Also records that admin.py was read under the lens and needed nothing, so the next reader does not re-derive that. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01T4YmK41VsEURWFdop4EEeT --- docs/MESHBAY_DESIGN.md | 22 +++++++++++++++++++++- 1 file changed, 21 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) (limited to 'docs/MESHBAY_DESIGN.md') diff --git a/docs/MESHBAY_DESIGN.md b/docs/MESHBAY_DESIGN.md index bda33f1..16e728f 100644 --- a/docs/MESHBAY_DESIGN.md +++ b/docs/MESHBAY_DESIGN.md @@ -2473,7 +2473,8 @@ Two structural recommendations from that review stand as rules: ### 13.5b Availability between members (`AV`) -**Added 2026-09-12, after the finding that produced it.** The first three +**Added 2026-09-12, after the finding that produced it, and extended the same +day when `users.py` and `admin.py` were read under it.** The first three reviews asked who can read what, who can impersonate whom, and what a hostile node can forge. None asked **what a legitimate but misconfigured or careless member costs everyone else** — and that is the question a group platform lives @@ -2489,6 +2490,21 @@ else bears the cost?** Where the answer is "someone other than the sender", there must be a ceiling, and it must apply on every path that writes the state — not only the one where the ceiling was first thought of. +Two shapes recur, and are worth naming because each accounts for several +entries. **A limit written on one of several equivalent paths** — three +endpoints send mail and one of them had neither a rate limit nor a captcha; +every list in `admin.py` is bounded and the two outside it were not; the group +claim was bounded at registration and not on reload. And **a bound that counts +the wrong thing** — a per-IP rate limit bounds a caller, never the mailbox that +receives what they cause, which is why `AV10` is a cooldown per *account* under +a limit per IP rather than a tighter limit. + +`admin.py` was read under this lens and needed nothing. Its moderator/admin +line is drawn explicitly — a moderator may not change a role, may not revoke, +and may not touch an admin's account at all — self-modification is refused, and +every list it serves is bounded. It is the part of the hub where the question +had already been asked. + | Label | The rule it names | |---|---| | **AV1** | **An empty claim is a claim on nothing.** A node's group set is `authorized ∩ claimed`, and an absent or empty `group_ids` registers it for no group rather than all of its owner's — on registration and on `update_groups` alike (§7.2) | @@ -2499,6 +2515,10 @@ there must be a ceiling, and it must apply on every path that writes the state | **AV6** | **A relay proves possession of its approved key.** A public key is not a password, and the register call is unauthenticated by design — it is not a user — so the proof is the only thing standing between a stranger and where nodes send relayed traffic | | **AV7** | **A node bounds how many peers it holds and how long an unproven one lasts.** The hub's cap is per calling account, which is a limit on each member and not on the machine, so without this an operator's exposure grew with the size of their groups | | **AV8** | **One account cannot make the hub mail another at will.** The invitation email's subject comes from the group row, never from the request, and the endpoint is metered | +| **AV9** | **No mail is sent from the event loop.** `smtplib` is synchronous and waits up to ten seconds; called from an async handler that wait is the whole instance's, not one request's. Every send goes through `mail.send_off_loop` | +| **AV10** | **Every path that makes the hub send mail is metered, per account.** A rate limit that counts by IP bounds a caller, not an inbox. Changing one's address mails an arbitrary stranger, so it carries a cooldown as well as a limit; so does a reset request | +| **AV11** | **A namespace a client writes into is closed, and its rows are capped.** The preference key space is an allow-list plus `default_tab:` checked as a group id, the value is length-bounded, and the row count per account is bounded | +| **AV12** | **Every list has an upper bound on `limit` and a floor under `offset`.** Including the ones that take no authentication at all | ### 13.6 Chat design findings -- cgit v1.2.3