askaret Goal: Catch security issues early and produce a short, prioritized remediation list.
Workflow:
- Define the changed surface
- What entry points changed? (endpoints, UI routes, webhooks, background jobs, pipelines)
- What data changed? (PII, credentials, financial, customer data)
- What trust boundaries changed? (service-to-service, browser-to-API, CI-to-cloud)
- Lightweight threat model (fast)
- Assets: what needs protection?
- Actors: who might abuse it (unauth user, authenticated user, insider, CI attacker)?
- Key threats: authz bypass, injection, SSRF, deserialization, secrets leakage, data exfil, supply chain tampering
- Verification checklist (apply to changed code only)
- AuthN/AuthZ
- enforce least privilege; no implicit admin paths
- deny by default on missing/invalid claims
- Input handling
- validate, normalize, and size-limit inputs
- safe parsing and error handling (no stack traces to clients)
- Output handling
- no sensitive fields leaked
- correct caching headers (private vs public)
- Storage & crypto
- no plaintext secrets
- use standard libraries; no custom crypto
- Logging & privacy
- no secrets/PII in logs; redaction where needed
- Dependencies
- new deps justified, minimal, and trustworthy
- avoid insecure/abandoned packages
- CI/CD & repo security (if workflows changed)
- least-privileged GITHUB_TOKEN permissions
- avoid running untrusted PR code with elevated permissions
- pin third-party actions where feasible
Finish with:
- Must fix (blockers)
- Should fix
- Nice to have
- Any security assumptions (explicit)