Security

Glass Power Tools holds the keys to other machines: SSH keys, database passwords, remote-desktop credentials. This page says how it protects them, what it does not protect, and how to report a problem.

Reporting a vulnerability

Please report security problems privately, by email to msitarzewski@gmail.com, not in a public issue. Once this repository is public, GitHub's private vulnerability reporting (Security ▸ Report a vulnerability) works too. Include what you found, how to reproduce it, and the version (Settings ▸ About). You will get an answer, and a fix or a plan, as quickly as the problem warrants. Please give a reasonable time to fix a problem before disclosing it.

Only the latest release is supported.

Problems in third-party code this app carries (Packages/) are reported to that project as well; this repository's PATCHES.md files record what is changed locally.

How credentials are kept

• Secrets live in the Keychain, never in preferences or files: passwords, private keys, database credentials and host-key pins. Configuration (hosts, services, settings) is stored separately from secrets.
• Syncing is iCloud's. The host library syncs through CloudKit in your private database; credentials and host-key pins sync through iCloud Keychain. Favorites, workgroups, projects, terminal settings, and each device's name with how many connections it made per day to each machine (no times of day), sync through iCloud's key-value store. Keys created in the Secure Enclave never leave the device they were made on and are never offered to another device.
• Nothing is sent anywhere else. The app connects to the servers you add, to iCloud for sync, and, only if you connect a Tailscale account for device discovery, to Tailscale's API. A link a terminal prints is opened only after you confirm it; a link to a 3D model is then downloaded from that address (http or https, at most 512 MB) and kept only if its bytes are a model's. The Mac app, once released, also checks an update feed — Sparkle asks on its second launch whether to do so automatically, and installs only updates signed with the project's key. It has no analytics or telemetry. The editor's Markdown preview runs with a content security policy that allows no network access.

Connections

• SSH host keys are pinned on first use, after you confirm them; a changed key stops the connection. Older algorithms (SHA-1 key exchange, AES-CTR) are off unless you turn them on for a host. RSA keys sign with rsa-sha2-512.
• Databases support TLS with certificate verification against system trust or a certificate you supply, and can be reached through the host's SSH connection instead. A direct connection with encryption off is allowed — a database on the same machine, or on a network you trust, is a legitimate choice — and the app says so where you set it up. Query history redacts literals unless you turn that off.
• RDP checks the server's certificate before any credential is sent: against system trust, or against a certificate you have pinned for that host and port.
• VNC to a Mac signed in with a Mac account is encrypted after sign-in: the app speaks the Mac's own Screen Sharing revision, whose session runs inside a record layer keyed by that sign-in. Any other VNC — a password alone, or a server that isn't a Mac — is not: those security types (none, VNC password) protect the password, not the session. If a Mac can't be reached in its own revision, the app says so and Reconnect connects unencrypted. Use VNC without a Mac account on a network you trust.

The Mac app is not sandboxed

A terminal has to start your shell and reach your files, tools and SSH agent, which App Sandbox does not allow. The Mac app therefore runs outside the sandbox, with the hardened runtime and no runtime exceptions. It is to be distributed outside the Mac App Store, signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple. Its widget extension runs sandboxed: it reads only the summary the app writes for the widgets (machine names, service kinds, times and counts) from an App Group of its own. The Finder's toolbar button, its Quick Action and Share ▸ Send to a Machine are sandboxed extensions too: they hold no credentials and make no connections, but leave the request (and any shared files) in that App Group and open the app, which does the work. The iPhone, iPad and Vision Pro apps run in their platforms' sandboxes.

Third-party code

The SSH stack (Citadel and its fork of SwiftNIO SSH) and the RDP engine (RDPKit) are carried in Packages/ at recorded upstream commits, with every local change listed and explained in the package's PATCHES.md or GLASSDT-PATCHES.md. Every dependency is pinned to an exact revision in Package.resolved. See THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md.