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pm-skills/pm-ai-shipping/skills/code-review/references/security-review.md
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Pawel HurynandClaude Opus 5 18032bc9f7 pm-ai-shipping: code-review becomes the top-level skill; perf + security are sub-cases
Restructure, per the ask that code review be the parent and the other two
dimensions its sub-cases:

- SKILL.md gains a "one engine, three anchors" section. Correctness is the
  core and stays inline; performance and security move to their own reference
  files, loaded only when selected.
- references/performance-review.md (new) — a universal, stack-agnostic core
  (repeated work, growth relationships, retention, copying, contention,
  amplification) plus the three-part bar for a performance finding. Defers the
  database/web checklist to /performance-audit-static instead of restating it.
- references/security-review.md (new) — trust boundaries and sinks for code
  with no web surface, and the one rule that INVERTS relative to correctness:
  attacker-equals-victim refutes a security finding but never a correctness
  one. Defers the full procedure to /security-audit-static.
- Both audit commands now say they are the specialisation behind their
  sub-case, so the narrow entry points still lead back to the skill.

ship-check gains two stages it was missing:

- Step 3, correctness review — the pass neither audit performs: logic and
  state defects that compile clean and pass the suite.
- Step 6, independent unsteered review — a fresh session of a second model
  (Codex or equivalent), given no checklist and no prior findings, with the
  subject computed from a diff rather than described. Every finding is
  hand-verified against the code before it enters the packet, since an
  unsteered reviewer carries no refutation discipline of its own. The packet
  reports whether it ran clean or did not run at all - those are different
  signals.

Also carries the working-tree edits already in progress: model-and-orchestration
guidance on both audits, the OWASP A02/A06/A09 backstop, CSP in the
output-encoding bullet, the prompt-injection/agent-abuse bullet, and the Audit
Provenance section (now also naming the second model).

No version bump - not tested against the benchmark yet.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01G42vsxSKL7je39AsHZ5aJm
2026-09-13 15:15:57 +02:00

4.2 KiB

Sub-case: security review

A specialisation of the parent engine. The anchor changes, and one refutation rule is inverted relative to correctness — read that section before running this sub-case alongside another.

Anchor: source → trust boundary → sink, with an attacker who controls the source.

The agreement being tested is between what a component trusts and what an attacker can supply. Where correctness asks "can this happen", security asks "can someone make this happen on purpose" — and an adversary will construct the unlikely execution deliberately.

Where the procedure lives

/security-audit-static owns the full specialised procedure — entry-point mapping, the four high-value paths, the keep/drop rule with its attacker-and-victim test, the OWASP Top 10 coverage backstop, and the high-miss checklist. Run it rather than restating it. This file exists to say what changes when security is selected as a dimension of a code review, and to supply the part of the engine that survives when the application has no web surface at all.

The universal core

Applies to a CLI, a library, a daemon, a build tool — anything without an HTTP handler in sight.

  • Trust boundaries — every point where data crosses from a less-trusted origin into a more-trusted context: arguments, environment, config files, stdin, filenames, archive members, network responses, plugin and extension surfaces, deserialised state, and model output.
  • Sinks — where a value becomes an instruction rather than data: process execution, dynamic evaluation, query construction, path resolution, template rendering, deserialisation, outbound requests, permission and role writes, and logging.
  • Injection by representation confusion — a value interpreted in the syntax of the sink rather than as an opaque datum. Encode for the sink, not at the input. This is the same disagreement as correctness lens 10 (representation and information loss), with an adversary steering it.
  • Validator/consumer differentials — the check and the use disagree about what the value means: unanchored patterns, prefix allowlists, normalisation applied on one side only, validation on one representation and execution on another.
  • Fail-open paths — error, timeout, cancellation, cache-miss and boundary branches that default to allow. Correctness lens 12 finds these; security decides what they cost.
  • Secrets and sensitive data in transit to the wrong place — logs, traces, error bodies, temporary files, crash dumps, and anything an unprivileged local user can read.
  • Privilege and identity — which principal an operation runs as, whether the check and the action name the same object, and what happens when they do not.

The inverted refutation rule

Under correctness, a defect that harms only the person who triggered it is still a defect. Under security it usually is not a finding: if the only victim is the attacker, on their own machine, account, tenant or data, and no shared system or privilege boundary is crossed, drop it.

The carve-outs where that refutation is forbidden — outbound-network sinks, shared billing or quota, data exposure, cross-tenant or cross-principal flows, and server-side execution or rendering — are listed in /security-audit-static. Use its list; do not reinvent one.

Do not let the two rules leak into each other. Running both dimensions in one review, keep the tests separate per finding: a defect dropped as a security finding may still be a correctness finding with a real consequence, and should be reported as one.

What makes a security finding

The parent skill's five requirements, with the trigger read adversarially:

  1. A supported obligation — the trust assumption, and what establishes it.
  2. A feasible execution — including who the attacker is and what they control.
  3. A concrete contradiction — the boundary that fails to hold.
  4. An observable consequence — naming the victim, who must not be only the attacker.
  5. An examined counterargument — a real check at the sink, an unreachable path, an upstream validator, or a non-dangerous sink.

Findings are code-review results, not confirmed exploits. Say so.