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SECURITY_MODEL.md

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Security Model

AETHER_02 is a local system administration tool. It is intentionally powerful, but it is designed to make risky actions explicit and auditable.

Boundaries

  • Transport: stdio only. No HTTP server, no listening TCP port.
  • Caller: local MCP client process running as the same user.
  • Logs: stderr only. stdout is reserved for JSON-RPC.
  • Network: AETHER_02 does not expose a remote API.

Safety layers

  1. Parameter validation at tool boundaries.
  2. No shell interpolation for tool operations. Use syscalls or explicit argv vectors.
  3. force: true for destructive operations.
  4. dry_run: true previews dangerous operations without mutating the host.
  5. Command allowlist blocks arbitrary program execution through command-backed handlers.
  6. Feature gates for critically dangerous Linux capabilities.
  7. Audit logging for every tool invocation.
  8. Path canonicalization where filesystem semantics require it.
  9. Compiler/linker hardening for release builds.

Risk levels

AETHER_02 treats operations as:

Level Meaning
safe Read-only inspection
moderate Local state changes with limited blast radius
dangerous Can break services, users, files, process state, or networking
critical Kernel, partitions, namespaces, ptrace, capabilities, or identity changes

Dangerous/critical actions are expected to require force: true, dry_run: true, or both force: true and a feature gate depending on the action.

Feature gates

All gates default to disabled (0). Enable only what you need and only on machines where you accept the risk.

Gate Env var Description
Kexec AETHER_KEXEC_LOAD=0 Load a new kernel via kexec
Module Load AETHER_MODULE_LOAD=0 Load/unload kernel modules
BPF Load AETHER_BPF_LOAD=0 Load BPF programs
Ptrace AETHER_PTRACE_ATTACH=0 ptrace attach to non-child processes
Namespace Create AETHER_NAMESPACE_CREATE=0 Create/enter Linux namespaces
Offline Mount AETHER_OFFLINE_MOUNT=0 Mount filesystems from raw block devices
Partition Edit AETHER_PARTITION_EDIT=0 Create/delete/resize disk partitions
Token Manipulation AETHER_TOKEN_MANIPULATION=0 Capability, setuid, setgid, and user-token changes

Example .env

AETHER_KEXEC_LOAD=0
AETHER_MODULE_LOAD=0
AETHER_BPF_LOAD=0
AETHER_PTRACE_ATTACH=0
AETHER_NAMESPACE_CREATE=0
AETHER_OFFLINE_MOUNT=0
AETHER_PARTITION_EDIT=0
AETHER_TOKEN_MANIPULATION=0

Reporting vulnerabilities

Do not open public issues for vulnerabilities. See ../.github/community/SECURITY.md.