Round 22. Three findings, all in code I wrote, and the first two are both
cases of a stated rationale being wrong rather than a line being wrong.
**`refreshingPersist` skipped the refresh on failure, and I had argued for
that explicitly.** The doc and its test both said "a persist that threw did
not write, so there is nothing new to describe". That is false for this write
order: both persistence paths write the secret store *before* the file, so a
rejected disk write can follow a `set` that has already upgraded
`secrets.json` from plaintext to encrypted. The wrapper then left the footer
describing a file that no longer exists in that form — the stale-descriptor
bug it exists to prevent, reached through its own error path.
It refreshes in a `finally` now. The asymmetry is what settles it: refreshing
after a failure that changed nothing costs one idempotent GET, while not
refreshing after a failure that changed something leaves a security statement
wrong until reload. The test asserting the old behavior is inverted, with the
reasoning recorded so it is not "corrected" back.
**The KDF parameters were validated for well-formedness, not for cost.**
scrypt's work is proportional to `N * r * p`, and all three come off disk — so
a file declaring a modest `N` with `p: 1_000_000` burns unbounded CPU on every
read *and* on merely describing the store for `/api/config`, which is a page
load. Anyone who can write that file can already read its secrets, so this is
not a privilege boundary; it is a footgun and a hang, and the fix is free
because this build writes exactly the constants it now enforces as maxima.
**Two secret-store mutations still bypassed the refresh.** The pagination
toggle resends the server's rehydrated secrets, and deletion sweeps them —
both are writes, and a write is what performs the pending upgrade. Routed
through the same wrapper as the rest.
Full `npm run ci` green, staged tree verified first.
Signed-off-by: cliffhall <cliff@futurescale.com>
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