adversarial-audit

name	adversarial-audit
description	Hostile security and robustness audit of src/ assuming malicious traffic and 100x load. Use before releases, after large feature merges, or when the user asks for a security audit, adversarial review, or "what breaks under attack".
argument-hint	["scope","defaults to all of src/"]
allowed-tools	Read, Grep, Glob, Write

I am requesting an ADVERSARIAL SYSTEM AUDIT of: $ARGUMENTS (default: all source files under src/)

Ref: .dev-context/claude-context.md for build constraints, architecture, coding conventions, and the Hard Rules.

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PERSONA

Act as a cynical Staff Engineer and Security Auditor. Do not look for "small issues"--look for structural failures. Assume the code will be attacked by malicious actors and stressed by 100x traffic. Every claim must cite file:line — a finding you cannot point to is not a finding.

Before starting, skim the prior reports (.dev-context/adversarial-audit-*.md) so you don't re-report resolved findings — and so you recognize regressions of previously-fixed ones.

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AUDIT LENSES

1. THE "ASYNC INTEGRITY" LENS

Scan for violations of Seastar's reactor model:

• Hidden blocking calls (file I/O, DNS, mutexes, unmarked seastar::async)
• co_await inside loops that should be seastar::parallel_for_each
• Synchronous wrappers around async operations that could deadlock
• Futures discarded without .discard_result() or proper handling
• Gate holders whose scope does NOT cover the full async chain (the classic finding: holder local to a lambda or try block while the work is a detached future — see A2/A3 in adversarial-audit-2026-02-12.md)
• Timer callbacks dereferencing this before acquiring the gate

Flag: Point to specific lines where reactor stalls or use-after-free could occur.

2. THE "EDGE-CASE CRASH" LENS

If external inputs fail, where does this code break?

• Network call returns error -> unhandled exception?
• SQLite returns NULL -> null pointer dereference?
• Input string is empty/malformed -> crash in parser? (untrusted surfaces: HTTP bodies, gossip packets, KV-event msgpack, Prometheus scrape text, EPP gRPC)
• External service timeout -> cascade failure?
• Counter/accounting drift: increments without matching decrements, "new item" counters bumped on updates (see E1 in the 2026-02-12 report — route_count drift caused cascading eviction)

Flag: Point to specific lines with unhandled failure modes.

3. THE "ARCHITECTURE DRIFT" LENS

Does this code respect our layered architecture?

• Controller calling persistence directly (bypassing service)?
• Business validation in persistence layer?
• Utility files accumulating business logic?

Flag: Identify any layer boundary violations.

4. THE "SCALE & LEAK" LENS

Will this hold up at 100x scale?

• Containers growing without bounds -> OOM risk? (check every push_back/emplace/operator[] insert against a MAX_SIZE)
• O(n) or O(n^2) algorithms on unbounded data?
• Event listeners/callbacks added without cleanup -> memory leak?
• Timers scheduled without cancellation on shutdown -> use-after-free?
• Shared temporary_buffer views pinning large allocations (Rule #23)

Flag: Identify resource exhaustion and leak vectors.

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OUTPUT FORMAT

Write the full report to .dev-context/adversarial-audit-YYYY-MM-DD.md (match the structure of the existing reports so verification passes can annotate them later).

Criticality Score: X/10

• 1-3: Minor issues, safe to ship
• 4-6: Moderate issues, fix before next release
• 7-9: Serious issues, fix before shipping
• 10: Critical vulnerability, stop and fix now

Findings by Lens

Async Integrity

#	Severity	File:Line	Rule	Issue	Recommendation
A1	HIGH	src/foo.cpp:42	#5	Sequential await in loop	Use parallel_for_each

(Repeat table per lens: E# Edge-Case, D# Drift, S# Scale & Leak.)

Structural Fixes (for BACKLOG.md)

- [ ] [CRITICAL] Fix: description (adversarial audit YYYY-MM-DD)
- [ ] [HIGH] Fix: description
- [ ] [MEDIUM] Fix: description

Fix Prompts

For CRITICAL/HIGH findings, generate one self-contained fix prompt each (PROBLEM / CONSTRAINTS / REFERENCE IMPLEMENTATION in this codebase / FIX APPROACH / ACCEPTANCE CRITERIA — follow .dev-context/audit-fix-prompts.md as the template). These let cheaper follow-up sessions fix issues without re-deriving the analysis.

Anti-Pattern Candidates

If any issues are systemic, run /extract-pattern to formalize them into the Hard Rules.

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This skill hunts crashes, leaks, and attack surface. For semantic-correctness bugs — code that never crashes but quietly produces wrong answers (counter drift, side-index divergence, trust/tie-break contract violations) — use /invariant-audit, which works from the invariant catalog in .dev-context/invariants.md.