Timmy-time-dashboard/docs/SECURITY.md

Security Policy & Audit Report

This document outlines the security architecture, threat model, and recent audit findings for Timmy Time Mission Control.

Sovereignty-First Security

Timmy Time is built on the principle of AI Sovereignty. Security is not just about preventing unauthorized access, but about ensuring the user maintains full control over their data and AI models.

1. Local-First Execution: All primary AI inference (Ollama/AirLLM) runs on localhost. No data is sent to third-party cloud providers unless explicitly configured (e.g., Grok).
2. Air-Gapped Ready: The system is designed to run without an internet connection once dependencies and models are cached.
3. Secret Management: Secrets are never hard-coded. They are managed via Pydantic-settings from .env or environment variables.

Threat Model

Threat	Mitigation
Command Injection	Use of asyncio.create_subprocess_exec with explicit argument lists instead of shell strings where possible.
XSS	Jinja2 auto-escaping is enabled. Manual innerHTML usage in templates is combined with DOMPurify and marked.
Unauthorized Access	L402 Lightning-gated API server (timmy-serve) provides cryptographic access control.
Malicious Self-Modify	Self-modification is disabled by default (SELF_MODIFY_ENABLED=false). It requires manual approval in the dashboard and runs on isolated git branches.

Audit Findings (Feb 2026)

A manual audit of the codebase identified the following security-sensitive areas:

1. Self-Modification Loop (planned, not yet implemented)

• Observation: When implemented, the self-modify loop will use subprocess.run for git and test commands.
• Risk: Potential for command injection if user-provided instructions are improperly handled.
• Mitigation: Input should be restricted to git operations and pytest. Future versions should sandbox these executions.

2. Model Registration (src/dashboard/routes/models.py)

• Observation: Allows registering models from arbitrary local paths.
• Risk: Path traversal if an attacker can call this API.
• Mitigation: API is intended for local use. In production, ensure this endpoint is firewalled or authenticated.

3. XSS in Chat (src/dashboard/templates/partials/chat_message.html)

• Observation: Uses innerHTML for rendering Markdown.
• Mitigation: Already uses DOMPurify.sanitize() to prevent XSS from LLM-generated content.

Security Recommendations

1. Enable L402: For any deployment exposed to the internet, ensure timmy-serve is used with a real Lightning backend.
2. Audit self_edit: The SelfEditTool has significant power. Keep SELF_MODIFY_ENABLED=false unless actively developing the agent's self-coding capabilities.
3. Production Secrets: Always generate unique L402_HMAC_SECRET and L402_MACAROON_SECRET for production deployments.

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Last Updated: Feb 28, 2026