# Iteration 10 Security Review Report

Date: 2026-03-01T16:06:53Z  
Focus: Synthesis and prioritized remediation roadmap

## Scope Detection Snapshots
- Before transition to iteration branch:
  - `{"mode":"commits","reason":"Branch is ahead of base with no local unstaged/uncommitted files.","branch":"codex/review/i10","base_branch":"main","uncommitted_files":0,"ahead_commits":20,"pr_context":false,"pr_url":null}`
- After creating/resetting `codex/review/i10` from latest `origin/codex/review-mainline`:
  - `{"mode":"commits","reason":"Branch is ahead of base with no local unstaged/uncommitted files.","branch":"codex/review/i10","base_branch":"main","uncommitted_files":0,"ahead_commits":20,"pr_context":false,"pr_url":null}`

## Findings By Severity
### Medium
- ID: I10-F1
- Area: Regression assurance drift
- Evidence: High-impact controls required multiple ad hoc targeted commands with no consolidated recurring runner.
- Exploit reasoning: Operational friction increases probability that mitigations are not re-verified, enabling silent policy regressions.
- Concrete fix: Add a single smoke-runner command for critical controls.
- Status: Implemented (`scripts/run_security_smoke.sh`).

### Medium
- ID: I10-F2
- Area: Residual prompt-injection robustness
- Evidence: Guardrails are prompt-based and not yet covered by a shared adversarial corpus across all multi-pass tools.
- Exploit reasoning: New prompt-composition paths can regress if adversarial coverage remains narrow.
- Concrete fix: Add cross-tool adversarial corpus tests in next cycle.
- Status: Patch-ready roadmap item.

## Implemented Changes
- Added consolidated security smoke suite:
  - [`scripts/run_security_smoke.sh`](/Users/fausto/.codex/worktrees/174b/gemini-research-mcp/scripts/run_security_smoke.sh)
- Smoke suite directly derived from iteration-9 lesson on regression blind spots:
  - URL trust-boundary rejection
  - Infra auth gate enforcement
  - Local path boundary enforcement
  - Upload idempotency/concurrency lock behavior
  - Preparation-failure transparency
  - Source-count limits
  - Redirect SSRF pre-follow validation
  - Batch-tool test harness stability

## Validation
- `./scripts/run_security_smoke.sh`
- Result: pass (`8 passed`)

## Reflective Self-Learning Loop
- Observe: Iterations 1-9 produced strong controls, but repeated validation remained high-friction.
- Infer root cause: Security confidence decays when verification requires manual recollection of test targets.
- Propose strategy: Consolidate controls into one deterministic smoke path for recurring automation.
- Validate: Implemented and executed smoke runner with full pass.
- Confidence delta: 0.68 -> 0.89 (control continuity) and 0.89 -> 0.93 (delivery confidence).

## Lessons Learned
- Sustained security quality depends on low-friction verification as much as one-time fixes.
- Iteration-to-iteration learning is strongest when each fix pattern gets encoded into repeatable tooling.

## Next Hypotheses
1. Gate `codex/review-mainline` merges on smoke suite execution in CI.
2. Expand prompt-injection adversarial corpus coverage across research and content reshape chains.
