fix(security): close path traversal and shell injection paths

[nichochar]

packages/api/
  path-utils.mts          +42/-0     containedPath / requireContainedPath
  schemas/
    config.mts            +31/-0     zod allowlist for POST /api/settings
  server/
    http.mts              +58/-9     contain /api/file + delete route, validate settings
  srcmd/
    decoding.mts          +38/-3     validate filenames at the trust boundary
  srcbook/
    path.mts              +13/-0     isSrcbookCellPath
    index.mts             +3/-1      removeSrcbook returns its promise
  session.mts             +21/-8     execFile for prettier, stderr is not failure
  deps.mts                +23/-16    execFile for depcheck, reject instead of throw
  test/
    path-utils.test.mts   +55/-0     9 tests incl. sibling-prefix case
    srcmd.test.mts        +49/-0     12 tests for filename rejection
tasks/0002-...md          +22/-1     close, record findings
.changeset/               +19/-0

Stacked on #507. Closes task 0002.

The second half of the security pass. Everything here is reachable by importing a .src.md from an untrusted source — which is a normal thing to do, since srcbook import exists specifically to fetch notebooks off the internet.

Unlike #507, these were found by reading rather than testing: both are destructive, so I didn't exercise them against a live instance.

Fixes

Path traversal into fs.rm(recursive: true). DELETE /api/srcbooks/:id built the path with Path.join, and express URL-decodes route params, so ..%2F..%2FDocuments escaped SRCBOOKS_DIR. Paths from user input now go through a containedPath helper that resolves and asserts containment. removeSrcbook returns its promise so failures are reported instead of becoming unhandled rejections.

Arbitrary file read. POST /api/file read any path on disk. Now confined to SRCBOOKS_DIR. Not deleted, because go-to-definition genuinely needs it — tsserver reports paths into a srcbook's own src/ and into type declarations under its node_modules, and that root covers both.

Shell injection via cell filename. formatCode interpolated a filename into a command string run through exec. Filenames are validated on rename but not when they arrive from a decoded .src.md, so ###### $(id).mjs in an imported notebook reached a shell. Now execFile with an argument array, run in the srcbook's own directory so npx resolves that copy of prettier rather than whatever is near the server's cwd. Same treatment for the depcheck call in deps.mts.

Validation moved to the boundary. Filenames are now checked when a .src.md is decoded, which is where untrusted input enters. This covers the link target as well as the h6 heading — the external form is ###### foo.ts followed by [foo.ts](./src/foo.ts), and it's the link that carries the real filename, so validating only the heading would have left the path open.

Mass assignment on settings. POST /api/settings handed req.body straight to db.update(configs).set(...), so any column was writable — including aiBaseUrl, which decides where AI requests, and the user's API key, get sent. Now an explicit zod allowlist.

Incidental

formatCode treated any stderr output as failure, but prettier writes warnings to stderr while still exiting 0. Only a non-zero exit counts now.

Tests

21 new, suite is 38 (from 11 at the start of the stack). The containment tests include the case that makes this kind of check go wrong in practice: /tmp/srcbooks-evil passes a naive startsWith('/tmp/srcbooks') while being an entirely different directory, so the check compares against root + path.sep.

Build, lint, and format all pass.

Noticed, not fixed

Two format bugs from REVIEW.md §2.2 that belong in their own change rather than a security PR: decode() still throws instead of returning {error: true} when metadata is missing, and encode() still assumes cells[0]/cells[1] are the title and package.json.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[nichochar]

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• fix: stop malformed input and lost sessions from crashing the server #509
• fix(security): close path traversal and shell injection paths #508 👈 (View in Graphite)
• fix(security): reject non-local origins, bind loopback by default #507
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