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Security: rmnvg/histodiff

Security

SECURITY.md

Security Policy

Supported versions

histodiff is pre-1.0 (the 0.x series) and publishes a single line of releases - there is no long-term-support branch. Security fixes are made against main and released as the next 0.x version.

Version Supported
Latest release on PyPI
Anything older

If you're on an older release, please upgrade before reporting an issue; a fix will only be backported in unusual circumstances (for example, an actively exploited vulnerability with no other mitigation).

Reporting a vulnerability

Please do not open a public GitHub issue for a suspected security vulnerability. A public issue discloses it to everyone, including anyone who might exploit it, before a fix exists.

Instead, please use GitHub's private vulnerability reporting for this repository:

  1. Go to the repository's Security tab.
  2. Click "Report a vulnerability".
  3. Describe the issue, the affected version(s), and, if you can, a minimal reproduction.

This opens a private advisory visible only to you and the maintainers, with its own discussion thread, until a fix is ready and you agree to disclose it.

What counts as a security issue here

histodiff is a text-diffing library and CLI: it reads two files, or two sequences in Python, and produces a description of their differences. Worth reporting privately, for example:

  • A crash, hang, or excessive memory/CPU use triggered by untrusted input, beyond what's already documented in the README's Limitations and Performance sections - for example, a way to hit worst-case behavior far more cheaply than the documented cost, or exhaust memory on a small input.
  • Any way that diffing two inputs could execute code, or read or write files other than the ones explicitly passed in.
  • A vulnerability in a dependency that affects histodiff specifically. Note that histodiff itself has no runtime dependencies; this would most likely concern the dev extra or the build/release toolchain instead.

Bugs that only affect diff quality - an unexpected alignment, a diff that's larger or less readable than expected - are not security issues. Please file those as a normal bug report instead.

Response policy

These are best-effort targets from an unpaid open-source project, not a contractual SLA:

  • Acknowledge a new report within 5 business days.
  • Provide an initial assessment - confirmed, not a security issue, or more information needed - within 10 business days of acknowledgment.
  • Once a fix is ready, coordinate a release and, unless you ask otherwise, credit you in the release notes and/or a GitHub Security Advisory.

There aren't any published security advisories