Security and credentials

Protect source authority, pinned transport, local credentials, and recorded evidence.

Canonfig separates profile authority, transport trust, follower authentication, and local credentials. None is a substitute for another.

Source authority

The Source Machine signs canonical Profile Revision payloads. Followers verify the signing fingerprint pinned at enrollment and verify every content digest. Profile Revisions are immutable after publication.

Protect source signing material and the Source Machine user account. A copied source state database or signing key can undermine installation-wide authority.

Transport trust

Enrollment pins the source HTTPS certificate fingerprint. Later transport rejects certificate changes, invalid signatures, digest mismatches, replayed invitations, and revoked follower credentials.

The shipped source server is loopback-only:

canonfig source serve --host 127.0.0.1 --port 17342

Do not weaken TLS verification or document an unsupported public bind as a shortcut.

Follower credentials

Each Follower Machine receives its own revocable credential. Followers never share one fleet token. Revocation is therefore scoped to one Follower Identity.

Credential Profile Resources use the require-local Apply Policy. They carry a reference, not the credential value. The platform seam uses:

Secret Service on Linux when secure noninteractive storage is available;
Keychain on macOS;
Credential Manager on Windows;
a local file only when the operator explicitly selected that policy.

Unavailable secure storage produces Human Action Required rather than silently writing plaintext.

Secrets in process evidence

Canonfig redacts configured secrets from captured arguments, stdout, stderr, and CLI payload fields before persistence or rendering. Redaction is defense in depth; avoid placing a secret on a command line or in profile content in the first place.

Keep these values out of examples

Never publish real invitation payloads, follower credentials, tokens, passwords, cookies, private keys, signing keys, TLS keys, or environment values that contain authentication material.

Agent execution

Agent Tasks and harness configuration use intersecting allowlists for paths, executables, network origins, and capabilities. Network origins must be exact HTTPS origins. Direct process invocation avoids shell interpolation.

Agent apply still requires independent verification. Authorization to execute a command is not proof that the desired resource exists or is correct.

Audit checks

canonfig doctor --no-input
canonfig status --json

Review credential capability, source TLS and authentication probes, agent adapter state, action journals, Human Action Required records, and verification evidence.