Aura is pre-alpha. The wire format, on-disk schemas, and cryptographic protocol can change without notice. Do not deploy it for sensitive communication. That said: it is a security/crypto project, and we take vulnerabilities in it seriously.

Please do not file public GitHub issues for security problems.

Email: jon@gnupg.net Subject prefix: [aura-security]

Please include:

• A description of the issue and its impact.
• The affected component (aura-server, aura-core, clients/macos, clients/desktop, or a doc/spec).
• Steps to reproduce, ideally with a minimal proof-of-concept.
• Your name/handle for credit, or a note that you wish to remain anonymous.

You should expect an acknowledgement within 7 days. If you don't hear back in that window, please re-send — the report may have been missed.

GitHub's private vulnerability reporting (Security tab → "Report a vulnerability") is also accepted and routes to the same person.

Aura follows a coordinated-disclosure model:

• We aim to ship a fix or mitigation within 90 days of a confirmed report.
• We will credit reporters in the release notes unless asked not to.
• Embargoes can be extended by mutual agreement when a fix is genuinely complex; we will not extend indefinitely.

If a vulnerability is being actively exploited in the wild, we will prioritize a fix and a public advisory over the standard timeline.

In scope — please report:

• Breaks in confidentiality of voice or text payloads (DAVE / MLS).
• Breaks in integrity or authenticity (forged frames accepted, sender-binding bypass).
• Breaks in forward secrecy across MLS membership changes.
• Authentication / TOFU bypasses against the server (aura-server).
• Memory-safety bugs in aura-core reachable from untrusted input (network, file).
• Wire-format parser bugs (aura-protocol) — fuzz harnesses live under crates/aura-protocol/fuzz/.
• Privilege escalation in admin/verification flows.

Out of scope (or report upstream):

• Metadata leakage that the protocol explicitly does not protect — see the threat model in README.md and docs/08_security_review.md. The server needs to see who is connected and to which channel in order to route ciphertext.
• Endpoint compromise. No protocol can save a conversation if a participant's machine is owned.
• Denial of service by sheer volume (Aura mitigates several DoS vectors but cannot guarantee availability against a determined attacker).
• Vulnerabilities in third-party dependencies (ring, quinn, openmls, opus, etc.) — please report upstream. If a dep CVE materially affects Aura, we will issue our own advisory linking to the upstream fix.
• Issues that require physical access or root on the user's own machine.

Pre-alpha: only main is supported. There are no LTS branches and no backported fixes. Tagged releases (v0.1.0-alpha and beyond) will note the supported lifetime when they are cut.

The in-tree security review at docs/08_security_review.md lists known open findings. Reports duplicating those will be acknowledged but de-prioritized; we already know.