Reporting vulnerabilities

What this page does

Tell a security researcher how to report a vulnerability to the deputyOS project, what the project promises in return, and what is out-of-scope.

How to report

Email security@deputyos.com.

Include:

A clear description of the vulnerability.
Reproduction steps (an exploit script if available).
Affected deputyOS release versions, target(s), and profile(s).
Your preferred credit name (or “anonymous”).
Whether you intend to publish; if so, your intended date.

PGP encryption is welcome but not required. The project’s PGP key is published at https://www.deputyos.com/.well-known/pgp-key.asc (the well-known path is not yet published).

Not yet published The security@deputyos.com inbox plus the well-known PGP path are not yet published. Until then, file an issue against the GitHub repository at deputyos/deputyos marked “[security]” in the title and an explicit note that you are requesting private disclosure. A maintainer will respond within 72 hours with a private channel.

What the project promises

Acknowledgment within 72 hours of receiving your report.
Status updates every 7 days while the report is being triaged or fixed.
Named credit (or anonymous, your choice) in the release notes for the fixing release.
CVE assignment for confirmed issues affecting deputyOS code.
Stable backport to every supported release channel for high-severity fixes (today: only dev is supported; beta and stable channels are not yet published).
Coordinated disclosure timeline — deputyOS targets a 90-day disclosure window from acknowledgment. We will not blow past 90 days without your explicit consent.

What the project does not promise

No bug bounty. deputyOS does not run a paid bounty program.
No coverage of upstream agent vulnerabilities. Bugs in OpenClaw / Hermes / Khoj themselves go to those projects’ upstream security contacts. deputyOS is the appliance layer; the upstream agent’s security model is a property of that project. We will, however, ship configuration mitigations (e.g. tightening an AppArmor profile to neutralize an upstream issue) where appropriate.
No coverage of self-hosted infrastructure issues. Misconfiguring a Cloudflare Tunnel, a Tailscale ACL, or your DNS is on you.
No coverage of provider issues. OpenAI / Anthropic / OpenRouter / Bedrock outages, key leaks at those providers, or data-handling incidents at those providers go to those providers.

Severity guidance

deputyOS uses CVSS v3.1 scoring with the following rough buckets, used for prioritization not for SLA:

Severity	Examples
Critical	Remote unauthenticated code execution; AppArmor confinement bypass leading to root
High	Authenticated path to read `/etc/deputyos/secrets.env`; signature-bypass in update path
Medium	Information leak from a single profile’s logs; cost-cap bypass
Low	Hardening drift in a non-default configuration

A “scaffold-only” issue (M-deferred functionality known to be incomplete and visibly labelled so) is not a vulnerability — see the roadmap. A “future-dated” issue (a vulnerability that only manifests once an M-deferred feature lands) is welcome and we’ll track it toward that milestone.

Public-disclosure timeline expectations

Day 0     report received
Day <=3   acknowledgment + initial assessment
Day <=14  fix in development OR out-of-scope decision communicated
Day <=30  fix landed in `dev` channel
Day <=60  fix backported to `beta` / `stable` (once those channels exist)
Day 90    public disclosure (or sooner with consent)

If you need to disclose before day 90 because of a third-party constraint (CVE pre-disclosure, coordinated industry advisory), tell us in the report. We will work with you.

Hall of fame

Researchers who reported confirmed vulnerabilities are credited in SECURITY.md (published alongside the security@deputyos.com inbox). If you’d prefer to remain anonymous, say so in your report.