🔒 Missing workspace boundary validation allows arbitrary file read

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Assessment

Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Newbie friendliness
78/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
rust
Domain
security

Research direction

Start in rust/crates/runtime/src/file_ops.rs at read_file, then inspect normalize_path and validate_workspace_boundary. Verify that the resolved path is checked against workspace_root before reading, including traversal and symlink escape cases; the issue is done when out-of-workspace reads are rejected while valid workspace reads still work.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

🔒 Security · 🟡 Medium · Confidence: 96%

File: rust/crates/runtime/src/file_ops.rs
Location: read_file

What's wrong

The function reads a file path supplied by the caller without checking that it stays inside the intended workspace. The line let absolute_path = normalize_path(path)?; resolves the user‑provided path to an absolute path, but no subsequent call to validate_workspace_boundary is made, so a malicious caller can traverse out of the workspace (e.g., using ../ or symlinks) and read any file the process can access.

Suggested fix

Validate the resolved path against the workspace root before reading the file. For example:

pub fn read_file(
    path: &str,
    offset: Option<usize>,
    limit: Option<usize>,
    workspace_root: &Path,
) -> io::Result<ReadFileOutput> {
    let absolute_path = normalize_path(path)?;
    // Ensure the path stays within the workspace
    validate_workspace_boundary(&absolute_path, workspace_root)?;
    // ... rest of the function unchanged ...
}
About this report

This finding was generated by an automated audit tool using Llama 3.3 70B + verification passes.
Only findings with ≥92% confidence that passed both LLM self-verification and line reference
verification are reported. False positives are still possible — please verify before acting.

Dominant language
Rust
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