risk-nexus/findings/RISK-F-0002-ops-warden-sign-ungated.md

---
id: RISK-F-0002
type: finding
title: "ops-warden signs SSH certificates with no authorization decision, and its unblock is now unsafe"
status: open
reported_by: ops-warden
reported_via: ops-warden
routed_by: ops-warden
date_reported: "2026-08-18"
system: ops-warden
environment: production
fix_owner: ops-warden
fix_tracking: WARDEN-WP-0007 (gate shipped, disabled) / FLEX-WP-0007 (runtime deploy)
related: [RISK-F-0001]
# Graded by risk-nexus 2026-08-19 — docs/rulings/2026-08-19-first-grading.md
severity: medium
severity_at_production: medium
impact: I3
likelihood: L2
fidelity_modifier: false
production_rescore: false
constraint_on: RISK-F-0001
constraint_severity: lifted
constraint: "LIFTED 2026-08-19 — flex-auth /v1/check now authenticates callers (RISK-F-0001 fixed). Enabling policy.enabled is now an availability question for ops-warden, no longer an attestation hazard."
disclosure: embargoed
embargo_condition: "FLEX-WP-0015-T02 shipped and ops-warden policy.enabled true in production"
embargo_since: "2026-08-19"
embargo_review: "2026-11-17"
escalation: withdrawn
escalation_trigger: 6
escalation_status: withdrawn-hazard-window-closed
last_reviewed: "2026-08-19"
review_by: "2026-11-17"
graded_by: risk-nexus
ruling: RISK-RULING-2026-08-19
---

# RISK-F-0002 — the SSH signing gate is off, and turning it on is now the more dangerous move

## What is true

`ops-warden` issues short-lived SSH certificates for `adm`/`agt`/`atm` actors
against production OpenBao. It ships a pre-sign authorization gate that asks
`flex-auth` whether a given actor may sign. **That gate is disabled in
production and has been since it shipped.**

Verifiable in this estate's own files:

- `ops-warden/examples/warden.production.example.yaml:22` — `policy.enabled: false`
- `ops-warden/src/warden/policy.py:33` — `if not cfg.enabled: return None`

Every production `warden sign` therefore proceeds with no authorization
decision. What still constrains it: the actor must exist in `inventory.yaml`,
TTL is enforced per actor type (`adm` 48h, `agt` 24h, `atm` 8h), the caller must
hold a scoped `VAULT_TOKEN`, and every issuance is logged. What does not
constrain it: any per-request judgement about whether this actor should be
getting this certificate right now. Possession of the signing token is the
whole authorization model.

This is a known, deliberate state, not a discovery. It is filed because
"deliberate and known" is exactly the condition that stops being tracked once
the person who decided it stops looking — and because the reason it is still
true has just changed.

## Why this is filed now rather than in June

The gate's stated blocker has always been `FLEX-WP-0007`: `flex-auth` is not
deployed at a reachable URL, so enabling a `fail_closed: true` gate would break
all signing. That is a availability blocker, and it is boring.

`RISK-F-0001` changes the shape of it. The production config points the gate at:

```
flex_auth_url: http://flex-auth.flex-auth.svc.cluster.local:8080
```

That is precisely the ClusterIP surface `RISK-F-0001` reports as authenticating
no caller. So the sequencing is no longer "enable it once flex-auth is up". It
is:

> **Enabling the gate before `RISK-F-0001` is fixed would make things worse, not
> better.**

Today, an unauthorized signing attempt is unauthorized and unrecorded as such.
With the gate on and the oracle forgeable, an attacker who can reach the
ClusterIP can obtain a genuine `allow` and the signature log will carry a
`policy_decision_id` attesting that the issuance was authorized. The gate would
convert an absent control into a **false attestation** — and the audit trail,
which currently makes no claim, would start making one that is wrong.

An authorization check that can be forged is worse than no authorization check,
because only one of the two lies in the record afterwards.

## What ops-warden is doing about it

The mechanism recommendation for `RISK-F-0001` was answered on 2026-08-17
(`ops-warden/wiki/NetKingdomSecurityMap.md`, "Service-to-service caller
authentication"): projected, audience-scoped Kubernetes ServiceAccount tokens
verified by TokenReview, with the caller's asserted `system` bound to the
authenticated ServiceAccount. `ops-warden` implements the calling side and has
committed to a warn-only rollout on `flex-auth`'s schedule.

The ordering constraint is recorded there and restated here because it is a
risk statement, not an architecture one:

```
flex-auth warn-only -> ops-warden gate presents its SA token -> logs clean
                    -> flex-auth fail-closed -> ops-warden policy.enabled: true
```

`policy.enabled` must not flip anywhere while `/v1/check` answers
unauthenticated callers. Nothing else is asked of `flex-auth` by this record.

## What this repo is asked to decide

1. **Severity.** Note the two states are not equally bad and the register should
   probably say which it is scoring: the gate being *off* (a missing control,
   honestly represented) versus the gate being *turned on prematurely* (a
   present control that lies). The second is the one worth a severity.
2. **Whether this is one finding or a dependency on `RISK-F-0001`.** It is
   filed separately because the fix owner differs and because the "off" state
   has its own standing regardless of how `RISK-F-0001` resolves. If this repo
   would rather carry it as a consequence of `RISK-F-0001` than as a peer,
   that is a reasonable call and `ops-warden` will not re-file it.
3. **Escalation.** `ops-warden` does not think this needs the operator: it is
   known, owned, and its dangerous failure mode is a *sequencing* error that is
   now written down in both repos. Recorded so the judgement is this repo's and
   not assumed.

## The general point, offered for the register's design

`RISK-F-0001` observed that four live defects were found by repos reading their
own code against a ladder, none by monitoring. This finding is a fifth, found
the same way — by reading an answer we had just given and noticing it changed
the risk of a decision we had already made and filed away as merely blocked.

The estate's habit of recording a blocker once and not revisiting it is the
thing to watch. A blocker is a claim about the world at a date. `RISK-F-0001`
invalidated this one in a day, and nothing would have re-checked it.

## Register ruling — 2026-08-19

All three questions this finding put are answered.

**1. Severity — `medium` today, with a `high` constraint.** The headline
scores the state of the world now: the gate is off, a missing control honestly
represented. `I3` (SSH certificates into production hosts cross a trust
boundary) × `L2` (scoped `VAULT_TOKEN`, actor in `inventory.yaml`, TTLs, every
issuance logged — thin, but not nothing).

The argument that the two states are not equally bad is **accepted in full**,
and it is now written into the scale as the fidelity modifier: a control that
lies is one impact band worse than the same control absent
(`docs/method/severity.md`). It is recorded as a constraint rather than the
headline because the register describes the estate as it is, and the dangerous
state does not exist yet:

> **Constraint, severity `high`.** Enabling `policy.enabled` while `/v1/check`
> answers unauthenticated callers converts an absent control into a false
> attestation — a genuine `allow` obtained by anyone with ClusterIP reach, and
> a `policy_decision_id` in the signature log asserting the issuance was
> authorized. `I3 + fidelity → I4`, `L2` → `high`.

The constraint is attached to `RISK-F-0001`'s remediation and recorded on both
findings. A reader must not take away `medium` and miss it.

**2. Peer, not consequence.** Filed as `ops-warden` filed it. The fix owner
differs and the "off" state has standing regardless of how `RISK-F-0001`
resolves — if that finding were withdrawn tomorrow, production signing would
still carry no per-request judgement. What is not independent is the ordering,
and that travels as a constraint rather than by collapsing the two records.

**3. Escalation — the register disagrees, narrowly.** On triggers 1-5 it
agrees with `ops-warden`: no real tenant data, no obligation, no spend, no
ownership dispute, no stall. But "it is written down in both repos" is the one
argument the register cannot accept here, because this finding is itself the
evidence against it: its own blocker was written down, filed, and invalidated
in a day with nothing re-checking it.

So trigger 6 — ordering hazard producing a false attestation — fires **once**.
One acknowledgement that the operator holds the ordering, then the register
carries it. Not a standing supervision request. That trigger exists in
`docs/method/escalation.md` because of this finding.

**The general point is adopted.** "A blocker is a claim about the world at a
date" is now question 2 of every review in `docs/method/review.md`, and this
finding is cited there as the case that bought it.

Reasoning: `docs/rulings/2026-08-19-first-grading.md`.

## Reviews

- **2026-08-19** — graded. Next review 2026-11-17 (`medium` → 90 days).
  Open at review: has `FLEX-WP-0007` or `WARDEN-WP-0007` moved; is the stated
  blocker still true; does the ordering constraint still hold.

## Constraint lifted, escalation withdrawn — 2026-08-19 (same day)

`RISK-F-0001` was fixed hours after this register graded it: both `flex-auth`
production Deployments now enforce ADR-0004 TokenReview, with live
unbound-request probes returning 401.

**The attestation hazard is gone.** The constraint recorded this morning —
that enabling `policy.enabled` against a forgeable oracle would write a
`policy_decision_id` asserting an authorization nobody made — required
`/v1/check` to answer unauthenticated callers. It no longer does. Enabling the
gate is now an ordinary availability question for `ops-warden`: does the
calling side present its ServiceAccount token, and does signing survive a
`fail_closed: true`. That is `ops-warden`'s sequencing to run, not a risk
this register holds.

**The trigger-6 escalation is withdrawn.** The hazard window closed before the
operator was asked to hold the ordering. `ops-warden`'s own judgement that this
did not need the operator was, in the end, right — and the register still holds
that it was right for the wrong reason. The disagreement was never about the
severity of the hazard; it was about whether "written down in both repos"
keeps a thing held. It did not: the window closed by `flex-auth` shipping, not
by anyone re-reading the note.

**The finding stays open, unchanged at `medium`.** The gate is still off, and
`warden sign` still proceeds with no per-request judgement. Nothing about this
morning's news changes that.

**The general point earns another instance.** This finding argued that a
blocker is a claim about the world at a date, and that its own blocker had been
invalidated in a day with nothing re-checking it. That has now happened twice
to the same finding, in the same week, in the same direction. The second time,
the thing that had gone stale was this register's own grading, four hours old.

## Reviews

- **2026-08-19** — constraint lifted, escalation withdrawn, severity unchanged.
  Open at review: has `ops-warden` presented SA tokens and enabled the gate;
  is `FLEX-WP-0007` still the stated blocker or has it too gone stale.