whitehat-security/SCOPE.md

Scope

One-liner

whitehat-security is NetKingdom's authorization-bound offensive-security tooling for producing adversarial evidence about security claims.

Core idea

The repository turns stated security properties into dated, reproducible attack attempts. It remains separate from the systems it tests, reports findings without grading their severity, and never treats a passing probe as proof that a boundary always holds.

In scope

• Attacker models for tenant isolation, credential confinement, noisy-neighbour behavior and erasure verification.
• Differential probes that compare behavior across controlled tenant contexts.
• Known-bad and known-good fixtures that demonstrate every probe can fail.
• Rules of engagement, target authorization, engagement records, abort controls and evidence minimization.
• Probe cadence and the resulting assurance/exposure window.
• Delivery of findings and passing-run evidence to risk-nexus.

Out of scope

• Fixing defects in target repositories.
• Assigning severity, disclosure policy or remediation deadlines.
• Replacing mechanical checks owned by a target repository's CI.
• Defining the estate's security model or publishing permanent policy.
• Probing any target without the authorization and engagement records required by the rules of engagement.
• Blocking build-mode delivery without a separately recorded decision.

Safety invariants

• The rules of engagement are accepted, but their acceptance authorizes no live target. Without a complete approved engagement record, only documentation and non-networked fixture design may proceed.
• No live target is authorized by this scope document.
• Every live run names its authorization, target, owner, window, technique, credential lane, rate ceiling, abort contact and finding destination.
• A probe stops at the recorded boundary and never follows an adjacent system.
• Evidence records response shape and counts, never real tenant row values or credentials.
• Findings leave this repository; repairs do not enter it.

Relevant when

• A service claims a Tenancy Posture evidence level that requires adversarial rather than mechanical evidence.
• A boundary must be tested using a leaked runtime credential or hostile tenant context.
• The estate needs to know when a probe last ran, what attacker it modeled, and whether it was proven against a known-bad fixture.

Not relevant when

• A repository needs unit, schema or provisioning tests for its own code.
• A finding needs triage, severity or disclosure handling; use risk-nexus.
• Permanent policy needs publication; use policy-nexus.
• The desired activity falls outside an approved engagement boundary.

Current state

• Repository status: active.
• Active plan: WHITEHAT-WP-0001.
• T01 is complete: the rules of engagement were accepted on 2026-08-21.
• T02 is complete: the per-axis attacker model is recorded in docs/attacker-model.md.
• T03 is in progress: the differential core and audit-core/tenant-engine target packs exist, but target run records are still gated.
• T04 is in progress: all generic read/write operations detect the known-bad fixture; target-specific calibration follows executable adapters.
• T05 is in progress with a 24-hour E3 cadence and offline evaluator.
• T06 is in progress with a bounded characterization evaluator; no shared substrate window is approved.
• T07 is in progress with a report schema and risk-nexus message formatter; the first target report has not yet been produced.
• No live probe traffic is authorized; each target still requires its own engagement record and approvals.

Relationships

• Owner and security canon: net-kingdom.
• Finding intake, severity and disclosure: risk-nexus.
• Permanent publication: policy-nexus.
• Initial proposed target owners: tenant-engine, audit-core and flex-auth.

Getting oriented

1. Read INTENT.md for the durable purpose and ownership model.
2. Read the rules of engagement before any probe design or execution.
3. Read WHITEHAT-WP-0001 for active tasks and sequencing.