wasmCloud

Projects that follow the best practices below can voluntarily self-certify and show that they've achieved an Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) best practices badge.

There is no set of practices that can guarantee that software will never have defects or vulnerabilities; even formal methods can fail if the specifications or assumptions are wrong. Nor is there any set of practices that can guarantee that a project will sustain a healthy and well-functioning development community. However, following best practices can help improve the results of projects. For example, some practices enable multi-person review before release, which can both help find otherwise hard-to-find technical vulnerabilities and help build trust and a desire for repeated interaction among developers from different companies. To earn a badge, all MUST and MUST NOT criteria must be met, all SHOULD criteria must be met OR be unmet with justification, and all SUGGESTED criteria must be met OR unmet (we want them considered at least). If you want to enter justification text as a generic comment, instead of being a rationale that the situation is acceptable, start the text block with '//' followed by a space. Feedback is welcome via the GitHub site as issues or pull requests There is also a mailing list for general discussion.

We gladly provide the information in several locales, however, if there is any conflict or inconsistency between the translations, the English version is the authoritative version.
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These are the Gold level criteria. You can also view the Passing or Silver level criteria.

Baseline Series: Baseline Level 1 Baseline Level 2 Baseline Level 3

        

 Basics 3/5 ●

  • General

    Note that other projects may use the same name.

    wasmCloud is a cloud native platform for running WebAssembly workloads across any cloud, Kubernetes, datacenter, or edge.

    Using wasmCloud, you can run microservices, functions, and agents as ultra-dense, deny-by-default bytecode sandboxes that are far more secure and efficient than traditional containers.

    Please use SPDX license expression format; examples include "Apache-2.0", "BSD-2-Clause", "BSD-3-Clause", "GPL-2.0+", "LGPL-3.0+", "MIT", and "(BSD-2-Clause OR Ruby)". Do not include single quotes or double quotes.
    If there is more than one language, list them as comma-separated values (spaces optional) and sort them from most to least used. If there is a long list, please list at least the first three most common ones. If there is no language (e.g., this is a documentation-only or test-only project), use the single character "-". Please use a conventional capitalization for each language, e.g., "JavaScript".
    The Common Platform Enumeration (CPE) is a structured naming scheme for information technology systems, software, and packages. It is used in a number of systems and databases when reporting vulnerabilities.

  • Prerequisites


    Enough for a badge!

    The project MUST achieve a silver level badge. [achieve_silver]

  • Project oversight


    Enough for a badge!

    The project MUST have a "bus factor" of 2 or more. (URL required) [bus_factor]
    A "bus factor" (aka "truck factor") is the minimum number of project members that have to suddenly disappear from a project ("hit by a bus") before the project stalls due to lack of knowledgeable or competent personnel. The truck-factor tool can estimate this for projects on GitHub. For more information, see Assessing the Bus Factor of Git Repositories by Cosentino et al.

    At least eight people each made 20 or more commits in the past year, MAINTAINERS.md (https://github.com/wasmCloud/wasmCloud/blob/main/MAINTAINERS.md) lists the maintainer teams, and CODEOWNERS assigns every path to the org-maintainers team. Releases are automated (RELEASE_RUNBOOK.md), so no single person is required to keep the project going.


    Enough for a badge!

    The project MUST have at least two unassociated significant contributors. (URL required) [contributors_unassociated]
    Contributors are associated if they are paid to work by the same organization (as an employee or contractor) and the organization stands to benefit from the project's results. Financial grants do not count as being from the same organization if they pass through other organizations (e.g., science grants paid to different organizations from a common government or NGO source do not cause contributors to be associated). Someone is a significant contributor if they have made non-trivial contributions to the project in the past year. Examples of good indicators of a significant contributor are: written at least 1,000 lines of code, contributed 50 commits, or contributed at least 20 pages of documentation.

    In the past year the repository received significant contributions from several contributors not associated with the organization that employs most maintainers, including if0ne, Aditya Salunkhe, Junji Takakura and Pavel Agafonov. See https://github.com/wasmCloud/wasmCloud/graphs/contributors.


  • Other


    Not enough for a badge.

    The project MUST include a license statement in each source file. This MAY be done by including the following inside a comment near the beginning of each file: SPDX-License-Identifier: [SPDX license expression for project]. [license_per_file]
    This MAY also be done by including a statement in natural language identifying the license. The project MAY also include a stable URL pointing to the license text, or the full license text. Note that the criterion license_location requires the project license be in a standard location. See this SPDX tutorial for more information about SPDX license expressions. Note the relationship with copyright_per_file, whose content would typically precede the license information.

 Change Control 4/4 ●

  • Public version-controlled source repository


    Enough for a badge!

    The project's source repository MUST use a common distributed version control software (e.g., git or mercurial). [repo_distributed]
    Git is not specifically required and projects can use centralized version control software (such as subversion) with justification.

    Repository on GitHub, which uses git. git is distributed.


    Enough for a badge!

    The project MUST clearly identify small tasks that can be performed by new or casual contributors. (URL required) [small_tasks]
    This identification is typically done by marking selected issues in an issue tracker with one or more tags the project uses for the purpose, e.g., up-for-grabs, first-timers-only, "Small fix", microtask, or IdealFirstBug. These new tasks need not involve adding functionality; they can be improving documentation, adding test cases, or anything else that aids the project and helps the contributor understand more about the project.

    Small tasks for new contributors are labeled "good first issue": https://github.com/wasmCloud/wasmCloud/labels/good%20first%20issue


    Enough for a badge!

    The project MUST require two-factor authentication (2FA) for developers for changing a central repository or accessing sensitive data (such as private vulnerability reports). This 2FA mechanism MAY use mechanisms without cryptographic mechanisms such as SMS, though that is not recommended. [require_2FA]

    GitHub requires 2FA as of March 2023. [osps_ac_01_01]


    Barely enough for a badge.

    The project's two-factor authentication (2FA) SHOULD use cryptographic mechanisms to prevent impersonation. Short Message Service (SMS) based 2FA, by itself, does NOT meet this criterion, since it is not encrypted. [secure_2FA]
    A 2FA mechanism that meets this criterion would be a Time-based One-Time Password (TOTP) application that automatically generates an authentication code that changes after a certain period of time. Note that GitHub supports TOTP.

    The organization requires 2FA but does not yet restrict members to cryptographic methods; we plan to enable GitHub's secure-methods-only setting.


 Quality 4/7 ●

  • Coding standards


    Enough for a badge!

    The project MUST document its code review requirements, including how code review is conducted, what must be checked, and what is required to be acceptable. (URL required) [code_review_standards]
    See also two_person_review and contribution_requirements.

    The main branch ruleset requires a pull request with at least one approving code-owner review, dismisses stale approvals on push, and requires approval of the most recent push, so every change is reviewed by someone other than its author before merge and release. Required status checks must also pass.

    Documentation for code review practices are covered in https://github.com/wasmCloud/wasmCloud/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#code-review.


    Enough for a badge!

    The project MUST have at least 50% of all proposed modifications reviewed before release by a person other than the author, to determine if it is a worthwhile modification and free of known issues which would argue against its inclusion [two_person_review]

    The main branch ruleset requires a pull request with at least one approving code-owner review, dismisses stale approvals on push, and requires approval of the most recent push, so every change is reviewed by someone other than its author before merge and release. Required status checks must also pass.


  • Working build system


    Not enough for a badge.

    The project MUST have a reproducible build. If no building occurs (e.g., scripting languages where the source code is used directly instead of being compiled), select "not applicable" (N/A). (URL required) [build_reproducible]
    A reproducible build means that multiple parties can independently redo the process of generating information from source files and get exactly the same bit-for-bit result. In some cases, this can be resolved by forcing some sort order. JavaScript developers may consider using npm shrinkwrap and webpack OccurrenceOrderPlugin. GCC and clang users may find the -frandom-seed option useful. The build environment (including the toolset) can often be defined for external parties by specifying the cryptographic hash of a specific container or virtual machine that they can use for rebuilding. The reproducible builds project has documentation on how to do this.

    Release builds pin all inputs (Cargo.lock, go.sum, SHA-pinned actions, digest-pinned base images) and set SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH from the commit timestamp, but bit-for-bit reproducibility is not yet verified.


  • Automated test suite


    Enough for a badge!

    A test suite MUST be invocable in a standard way for that language. (URL required) [test_invocation]
    For example, "make check", "mvn test", or "rake test" (Ruby).

    cargo test (after cargo xtask build-fixtures) for the Rust workspace and go test ./... for the operator and gateway: https://github.com/wasmCloud/wasmCloud/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#running-tests


    Enough for a badge!

    The project MUST implement continuous integration, where new or changed code is frequently integrated into a central code repository and automated tests are run on the result. (URL required) [test_continuous_integration]
    In most cases this means that each developer who works full-time on the project integrates at least daily.

    Every pull request and every push to main runs the Rust, Go, component, coverage and Kubernetes end-to-end suites in GitHub Actions, and merges require the gate check to pass: https://github.com/wasmCloud/wasmCloud/actions


    Not enough for a badge.

    The project MUST have FLOSS automated test suite(s) that provide at least 90% statement coverage if there is at least one FLOSS tool that can measure this criterion in the selected language. [test_statement_coverage90]

    Coverage is measured on every push to main with cargo-llvm-cov and enforced at 80% (https://github.com/wasmCloud/wasmCloud/actions/workflows/coverage.yml); the latest run reports 83% line coverage, below 90%.


    Not enough for a badge.

    The project MUST have FLOSS automated test suite(s) that provide at least 80% branch coverage if there is at least one FLOSS tool that can measure this criterion in the selected language. [test_branch_coverage80]

    Coverage is measured on every push to main with cargo-llvm-cov, a FLOSS tool (https://github.com/wasmCloud/wasmCloud/actions/workflows/coverage.yml), and the job fails below 80% line and 80% region coverage (xtask/src/coverage.rs). Branch coverage is not measured yet. LLVM region coverage counts each side of a condition as its own region, so it is close to branch coverage, but it is not the same metric. We plan to enable llvm-cov branch coverage and hold it at 80%.


 Security 3/5 ●

  • Use basic good cryptographic practices

    Note that some software does not need to use cryptographic mechanisms. If your project produces software that (1) includes, activates, or enables encryption functionality, and (2) might be released from the United States (US) to outside the US or to a non-US-citizen, you may be legally required to take a few extra steps. Typically this just involves sending an email. For more information, see the encryption section of Understanding Open Source Technology & US Export Controls.

    Enough for a badge!

    The software produced by the project MUST support secure protocols for all of its network communications, such as SSHv2 or later, TLS1.2 or later (HTTPS), IPsec, SFTP, and SNMPv3. Insecure protocols such as FTP, HTTP, telnet, SSLv3 or earlier, and SSHv1 MUST be disabled by default, and only enabled if the user specifically configures it. If the software produced by the project does not support network communications, select "not applicable" (N/A). [crypto_used_network]

    Outbound connections default to encrypted protocols: OCI registry pulls use HTTPS unless an operator explicitly sets --allow-insecure-registries (default false), outbound wasi:http requests to https:// hosts use TLS, and NATS connections support TLS (and TLS-first) with CA and client certificates. Inbound HTTP ingress supports TLS (--tls-cert-path/--tls-key-path). Plain HTTP ingress remains available for deployments where a gateway or ingress controller terminates TLS in front of the host.


    Enough for a badge!

    The software produced by the project MUST, if it supports or uses TLS, support at least TLS version 1.2. Note that the predecessor of TLS was called SSL. If the software does not use TLS, select "not applicable" (N/A). [crypto_tls12]

    All TLS in wasmCloud uses rustls 0.23 (with the aws-lc-rs provider), via rustls, tokio-rustls, hyper-rustls, reqwest's rustls-tls and oci-client's rustls-tls features (workspace Cargo.toml). rustls implements only TLS 1.2 and TLS 1.3 and has no support for SSL or TLS 1.0/1.1.


  • Secured delivery against man-in-the-middle (MITM) attacks


    Not enough for a badge.

    The project website, repository (if accessible via the web), and download site (if separate) MUST include key hardening headers with nonpermissive values. (URL required) [hardened_site]
    Note that GitHub and GitLab are known to meet this. Sites such as https://securityheaders.com/ can quickly check this. The key hardening headers are: Content Security Policy (CSP), HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS), X-Content-Type-Options (as "nosniff"), and X-Frame-Options. Fully static web sites with no ability to log in via the web pages could omit some hardening headers with less risk, but there's no reliable way to detect such sites, so we require these headers even if they are fully static sites.

    Required security hardening headers missing: https://wasmcloud.com: content-security-policy


  • Other security issues


    Enough for a badge!

    The project MUST have performed a security review within the last 5 years. This review MUST consider the security requirements and security boundary. [security_review]
    This MAY be done by the project members and/or an independent evaluation. This evaluation MAY be supported by static and dynamic analysis tools, but there also must be human review to identify problems (particularly in design) that tools cannot detect.

    Per security-insights.yml: repository.security.assessments.third-party=[{"name" => "OSTIF and Trail of Bits security audit", "evidence" => "https://ostif.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/wasmcloud-audit-ostif-trail-of-bits-final.pdf", "date" => "2023-10-17", "comment" => "Covered wasmCloud 1.x. The 2.x host in this repository replaced the audited code."}]


    Unknown required information, not enough for a badge.

    Hardening mechanisms MUST be used in the software produced by the project so that software defects are less likely to result in security vulnerabilities. (URL required) [hardening]
    Hardening mechanisms may include HTTP headers like Content Security Policy (CSP), compiler flags to mitigate attacks (such as -fstack-protector), or compiler flags to eliminate undefined behavior. For our purposes least privilege is not considered a hardening mechanism (least privilege is important, but separate).

    wasmCloud uses several hardening mechanisms so that defects are less likely to become vulnerabilities:

    • Memory-safe languages and denied undefined behavior: the host, CLI and plugins are Rust and the operator and gateway are Go. The Rust workspace denies unsafe_code for every crate ([workspace.lints.rust] in Cargo.toml, with warnings also denied); the few exceptions are individually annotated #[allow(unsafe_code)] sites for OS FFI and environment mutation, each with a SAFETY comment.
    • Lints that eliminate crash and misuse classes: the workspace denies clippy's unwrap_used, expect_used, panic, indexing_slicing, panicking_unwrap, transmute_ptr_to_ref, transmute_undefined_repr and serde_api_misuse ([workspace.lints.clippy] in Cargo.toml), so an unexpected input yields an error instead of a panic, an out-of-bounds index, or an unsound transmute.
    • Compiler and linker hardening: Rust release binaries are built with the toolchain's default mitigations for Linux targets (position-independent executables, full RELRO, non-executable stack and data, and stack probes against stack clashing), and Go binaries get the Go runtime's bounds checking and stack guards.
    • Sandboxing of untrusted code: guest WebAssembly runs in wasmtime with bounds-checked linear memory and guard pages, structured control flow (Wasm-level control-flow integrity), Spectre mitigations on memory and table accesses, and epoch-based interruption, so a defect in guest code cannot read or write host memory.
    • Resource limits: per-workload and host-wide limits on guest memory, connections and file descriptors (crates/wash-runtime/src/engine/guest_memory.rs, crates/wash-runtime/src/host/quota.rs) keep a defect from exhausting the host.
    • Continuous checks: CodeQL, zizmor, cargo audit and cargo deny run in CI.

    Warning: URL required, but no URL found.


 Analysis 1/2 ●

  • Dynamic code analysis


    Not enough for a badge.

    The project MUST apply at least one dynamic analysis tool to any proposed major production release of the software produced by the project before its release. [dynamic_analysis]
    A dynamic analysis tool examines the software by executing it with specific inputs. For example, the project MAY use a fuzzing tool (e.g., American Fuzzy Lop) or a web application scanner (e.g., OWASP ZAP or w3af). In some cases the OSS-Fuzz project may be willing to apply fuzz testing to your project. For purposes of this criterion the dynamic analysis tool needs to vary the inputs in some way to look for various kinds of problems or be an automated test suite with at least 80% branch coverage. The Wikipedia page on dynamic analysis and the OWASP page on fuzzing identify some dynamic analysis tools. The analysis tool(s) MAY be focused on looking for security vulnerabilities, but this is not required.

    Every release candidate passes the full automated test suites in CI (Rust unit and integration tests, component fixtures, Kubernetes end-to-end tests), with coverage measured by cargo-llvm-cov at 83% of lines and enforced at 80% of lines and regions (https://github.com/wasmCloud/wasmCloud/actions/workflows/coverage.yml). Branch coverage is not yet measured, and fuzzing is not yet part of the release process: the operator has Go native fuzz targets (e.g. runtime-operator/api/runtime/v1alpha1/workload_fuzz_test.go) whose seed corpora run with the regular tests, but they are not fuzzed before release. We plan to add a pre-release fuzzing job.


    Enough for a badge!

    The project SHOULD include many run-time assertions in the software it produces and check those assertions during dynamic analysis. [dynamic_analysis_enable_assertions]
    This criterion does not suggest enabling assertions during production; that is entirely up to the project and its users to decide. This criterion's focus is instead to improve fault detection during dynamic analysis before deployment. Enabling assertions in production use is completely different from enabling assertions during dynamic analysis (such as testing). In some cases enabling assertions in production use is extremely unwise (especially in high-integrity components). There are many arguments against enabling assertions in production, e.g., libraries should not crash callers, their presence may cause rejection by app stores, and/or activating an assertion in production may expose private data such as private keys. Beware that in many Linux distributions NDEBUG is not defined, so C/C++ assert() will by default be enabled for production in those environments. It may be important to use a different assertion mechanism or defining NDEBUG for production in those environments.

    The software includes run-time assertions that are checked during testing and coverage runs, and are not relied on in production:

    • Explicit invariant assertions: debug_assert! checks guard internal invariants on the hottest and most state-heavy paths, for example call-state encoding and store-drop tracking in the invocation dispatcher (crates/wash-runtime/src/engine/dispatch.rs), and socket state in crates/wash-runtime/src/sockets/. These are compiled into test, coverage and debug builds and removed from release builds.
    • Compiler-inserted checks: the test suites and the cargo-llvm-cov coverage job (https://github.com/wasmCloud/wasmCloud/actions/workflows/coverage.yml) build with the dev profile, which enables integer-overflow checks and debug assertions in wasmCloud and its dependencies, including wasmtime's internal assertions. Array and slice bounds checks and RefCell borrow checks are always on.
    • Assertions surface as errors in production: the workspace denies clippy's unwrap_used, expect_used, panic and indexing_slicing (Cargo.toml), so invariants that can fail on real input are checked explicitly and returned as errors rather than crashing the host.
    • The test suites themselves (crates/wash-runtime/tests/, crates/wash/tests/, and the operator's Go tests) assert on behavior extensively.


You can use tools and AI systems to propose changes via a simple URL, such as https://www.bestpractices.dev/en/projects/6363/choose/edit?osps_ac_01_01_status=Met&osps_ac_01_01_justification=GitHub+enforced. See our automation proposals system for how to do that. This data is available under the Community Data License Agreement – Permissive, Version 2.0 (CDLA-Permissive-2.0). This means that a Data Recipient may share the Data, with or without modifications, so long as the Data Recipient makes available the text of this agreement with the shared Data. Please credit Brooks Townsend and the OpenSSF Best Practices badge contributors.

Project badge entry owned by: Brooks Townsend.
Entry created on 2022-08-15 21:56:48 UTC, last updated on 2026-11-03 20:55:31 UTC. Last lost passing badge on 2023-11-02 18:23:16 UTC. Last achieved passing badge on 2023-11-02 18:38:53 UTC.