picosentry 2.0.18

Unified supply-chain security suite — scanner, sandbox, LLM defense, and orchestration

PicoSentry 🦞

Local supply-chain scanner with offline, deterministic detection across npm, PyPI, Go, Cargo, Maven, RubyGems, and NuGet. Kernel-sandbox enforcement is included as a beta capability for runtime containment.

PicoSentry scans a candidate package for malicious-behavior patterns — obfuscation, typosquatting, dependency confusion, post-install exfiltration, known IOCs, and CVEs — using a fully offline rule catalog. A kernel-sandbox (seccomp-bpf + landlock) is available to enforce syscalls at install time; full per-syscall tracing from the kernel is tracked as future work.

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Status

Source of truth: picosentry/experimental.py.

Component	Status	Notes
picosentry scan	Stable	Core scanner; 7 ecosystems; deterministic, offline; 54 rules, 188 fixtures
picosentry sandbox	Beta	seccomp-bpf enforces; gRPC + HTTP daemon; L4 behavioral analysis
picosentry watch	Beta	Deterministic regex + lexical classifier pre-filter for prompt injection (L5) and output validation (L6); not a semantic/LLM guarantee; CLI + HTTP server
picosentry serve	Beta	API server, dashboard, RBAC, multi-tenant — security review + regression tests in place
picosentry daemon	Beta	Sandbox-as-a-service; HTTP + gRPC; auth, rate limiting, TLS/mTLS, audit
picosentry admission	Beta	K8s admission webhook; pod security validation + optional image scanning; fail-closed by default when image scanning is enabled; live-tested against a kind cluster
picosentry corpus	Beta	Export/import/validate/list/sign IoC packs; 3 built-in packs
Cross-layer correlation	Beta	Links findings across scan + sandbox + watch layers; persistence, dedup, and per-minute backpressure tested
Plugin system	Beta	Loads, validates, dispatches; Ed25519 signature verify against a configured trusted-key allowlist; unsigned plugins load only when signing is not required
Postgres backend	Beta	psycopg2 pool + runtime placeholder translation + DDL auto-translation + dialect helpers
Cluster mode	Beta	Gossip over HTTP(S) with shared cluster token + optional mTLS; monotonic versioning; 3-node integration test
Detection benchmarks	Stable	188 fixtures (150 pos / 38 neg), 54 rules, 100% CI floor (small corpus — see honest limitations)
Docker image	Stable	kirkforge/picodome:v2.0.17 on Docker Hub; multi-arch (linux/amd64 + linux/arm64); non-root user
PyPI package	Stable	pip install picosentry — v2.0.17 published

The scanner is the stable product. Everything else is beta or experimental — read the notes column honestly. "Beta" means it works but hasn't been battle-tested in production. "Experimental" means it runs but hasn't had a security review — don't expose it to untrusted networks.

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What it does NOT do (today)

• Records per-syscall traces from the kernel sandbox (opt-in via --backend=seccomp-trace on picosentry sandbox; requires Linux + libseccomp + CONFIG_SECCOMP_LOG=y). Path/address arguments on events are not yet captured.
• picosentry watch is a fast pre-filter, not a semantic guarantee. It uses deterministic regex rules plus a lexical classifier to catch common prompt injections and output-policy violations. Paraphrase, novel phrasing, encoding tricks, or adversarial prompts can still slip through. For high-stakes LLM deployments, pair it with a dedicated model-based guard as a second layer.
• Does not scan LLM model weights. It guards prompts and outputs in deployed apps, not the model itself.
• Cluster mode is beta. Gossip over HTTP(S) requires a shared cluster token and supports optional mTLS; a 3-node integration test exercises leader election, token enforcement, and scan redistribution. It has not been battle-tested in a real multi-host deployment.
• Postgres backend is Beta. It includes a live integration test for connection pooling, runtime placeholder translation, and DDL auto-translation, but it has not been battle-tested at scale.
• Admission controller is live-tested against kind. The real-cluster matrix in .github/workflows/admission-kind.yml exercises pod admission decisions across K8s v1.28–v1.30.
• Has published detection-benchmark data in docs/BENCHMARKS.md. The v2.0.15 corpus is 188 fixtures (150 positive, 38 negative) / 50 L2 rule_ids + 4 L2-CAMP rule_ids / 100% precision / 100% recall. The corpus is small (mean ~3 positives + ~3 negatives per rule across 54 rules) and the fixtures are mostly hand-crafted, so the 100% number is a smoke test, not a statistically meaningful measurement. See "Honest limitations" in that document for what the numbers do and don't prove.
• Does not advertise a CVE database on its own. CVE matching uses the OSV corpus ([scan] extra); offline-only operation pulls from the local corpus snapshot.

If a feature is listed as Experimental above, treat it as not production-ready.

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30-second demo (no clone)

pip install picosentry
picosentry scan ./your-project          # any project on disk
picosentry scan ./package.json          # or a single manifest

If you prefer a reproducible example, the repo ships a malicious PyPI fixture:

git clone https://github.com/KirkForge/PicoSentry.git
cd PicoSentry
picosentry scan examples/pypi-obfuscated-setup/

Real CLI output

$ picosentry scan examples/pypi-obfuscated-setup/
PICOSENTRY_CACHE_HMAC_KEY not set — cache entries will be invalidated on process restart. Set it for persistent cache integrity.
🦞 PicoSentry
Target: /home/kirk/Madlab/Clean-Live/PicoSeries/picosentry/examples/pypi-obfuscated-setup
Engine: v2.0.5 | Corpus: vef6b3b3115bb
Scan ID: 08057439b4ba08d8

Packages scanned: 0
Files scanned:     2
Duration:          20ms

The scan above fires 5+ findings across the obfuscation, post-install, and exfiltration rules. Re-run with the same inputs and the Scan ID and Corpus digest will match exactly — that's the determinism guarantee.

A complete sample output (with rule IDs and severities) for the same example is checked into the repo. The example is the reproducible fixture we use in CI.

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What it detects (a subset)

Rule	What it catches	Example
L2-TYPO-001	Typosquatted package names	reqursts instead of requests
L2-DEPC-001	Dependency confusion (private → public)	internal-pkg not on registry
L2-PYPI-OBFS-001	Dynamic execution in setup.py	exec() / eval() in install scripts
L2-PYPI-OBFS-002	Base64-decoded payloads in source	base64.b64decode(...) + dynamic use
L2-PYPI-OBFS-007	Base64 decode + exec/eval combo	Decode-then-execute obfuscation chain
L2-PYPI-POST-001	Post-install code execution	setup.py runs code at install time
L2-NETEX-001	Network calls during install	urllib.request, curl, wget at install
L2-IOC-001	Known IOC behavior patterns	Hardcoded C2 host, exfil URL patterns
L2-CVE-001	Known CVEs in dependency tree	OSV-matched vulnerabilities
L2-DEP-001	Deprecated / insecure dependency	End-of-life library versions
L2-SBOM-001	SBOM generation	CycloneDX-compatible output
L2-LICENSE-001	License compliance	Copyleft, unknown, deprecated licenses

Full rule catalog: picosentry/scan/docs/rules/ (49 L2 rule_ids in RULE_INFO; RULE_ID_ALIASES expands 3 detectors to 13 sub-rule_ids for a total of 50 measurable rule_ids across the supported ecosystems).

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Feature matrix

Feature	PicoSentry	pip-audit	osv-scanner	Trivy	Socket
Offline operation	yes	partial	partial	partial	no
Deterministic output (bit-identical runs)	yes	no	no	no	no
Malicious-behavior detection (not just CVEs)	yes	no	no	partial	partial
Multi-ecosystem (npm, PyPI, Go, Cargo, Maven, RubyGems, NuGet)	yes	partial	yes	yes	partial
Runtime sandbox enforcement (kernel-level)	beta	no	no	no	no
Runtime syscall observation from kernel	no	no	no	no	no
Source-available license	yes (BUSL-1.1)	yes (Apache-2.0)	yes (Apache-2.0)	yes (Apache-2.0)	no

Where PicoSentry is weaker: pip-audit and osv-scanner have wider and more frequently refreshed CVE coverage via OSV. Trivy has broader container and IaC scanning. Socket has hosted workflow integrations PicoSentry doesn't ship. The differentiator is the combination of offline + deterministic + malicious-behavior rules in a single offline binary — not raw CVE breadth.

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Install

# Core scanner — works offline, no HTTP deps (only `pyyaml` installed)
pip install picosentry

# Extras
pip install picosentry[scan]      # + online corpus management
pip install picosentry[serve]     # + API server + dashboard
pip install picosentry[all]       # Everything

The default pip install picosentry is deliberately lightweight — it pulls in only pyyaml, which is enough to run picosentry scan against any project. To use the API server, dashboard, or HTTP corpus refresh, install the matching extras (see install options below).

Install options

Command	What you get
pip install picosentry	Core: scanner, sandbox, watch (lightweight)
pip install picosentry[scan]	+ requests for online corpus management
pip install picosentry[serve]	+ FastAPI server, dashboard, auth, scheduler
pip install picosentry[watch-server]	+ FastAPI + uvicorn for watch HTTP daemon
pip install picosentry[otel]	+ OpenTelemetry tracing
pip install picosentry[sigstore]	+ Sigstore signing support
pip install picosentry[grpc]	+ grpcio>=1.50 for the sandbox gRPC transport (committed protobuf stubs are included in the wheel, no grpc_tools required)
pip install picosentry[all]	Everything (including [grpc])

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Programmatic use

PicoSentry is CLI-first. The supported interface is the command line (picosentry, picowatch, picodome, …). The Python modules under picosentry.* are internal implementation details and may change without notice; there is no stable public import API today. If you need a programmatic entrypoint, open an issue describing the use case.

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Sandbox gRPC transport (opt-in)

The sandbox daemon can serve over gRPC instead of HTTP. Install the extra, then start the daemon with --transport=grpc:

pip install 'picosentry[grpc]'

# Start the daemon (port 50051 by default; pass --grpc-port to change)
picosentry daemon --host=0.0.0.0 --port=8443 --transport=grpc --grpc-port=50051

The generated protobuf stubs (picodome_pb2.py, picodome_pb2_grpc.py) are committed under picosentry/sandbox/grpc_transport/proto/ and ship in the wheel, so a client only needs grpcio to talk to the daemon. Regenerate the stubs with scripts/regen_proto.sh after editing picodome.proto.

For Kubernetes: deploy/kubernetes/deployment.yaml boots the daemon with gRPC enabled by default and ships a picodome-grpc Service on port 50051. For Helm, the equivalent is opt-in:

# values.yaml
grpc:
  enabled: true
  port: 50051

helm install picodome deploy/helm/picodome/ --set grpc.enabled=true

The gRPC service exposes Scan, Health, GetPolicy, and QueryAudit RPCs — see picosentry/sandbox/grpc_transport/proto/picodome.proto for the full schema.

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Usage

picosentry scan ./my-project
picosentry scan ./package.json                  # single file
picosentry scan --format json ./project         # JSON output
picosentry scan --format sarif ./project        # SARIF output
picosentry scan --format cyclonedx ./project    # CycloneDX SBOM
picosentry scan --verify-determinism ./project  # assert SHA-256 stability
picosentry scan --diff scan-a.json scan-b.json  # compare two scans
picosentry scan --fail-on high ./project        # exit non-zero on HIGH+
picosentry sandbox echo "hello"                 # beta — kernel-level enforcement
picosentry watch scan-prompt --text "..."       # beta — LLM prompt guard
picosentry serve --port 8765                    # beta — API + dashboard
picosentry health

Corpus management

PicoSentry ships with a small built-in typosquat/dep-confusion corpus. For stronger coverage, download per-ecosystem top-package lists and keep them fresh:

picosentry update --ecosystem npm --top 5000
picosentry update --ecosystem all --top 10000

Supported ecosystems: npm, pypi, go, cargo, maven, rubygems, nuget. npm and PyPI have live registry fetchers; other ecosystems merge a built-in fallback with any names supplied via --source-url. The command writes a corpus.json manifest, and the scanner warns when any ecosystem corpus is older than 30 days.

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Plugins (serve mode)

The picosentry serve runtime discovers plugins from three places, in priority order:

1. --plugin-dir PATH (repeatable) on the serve subcommand.
2. PICOSHOGUN_PLUGIN_DIR env var (comma-separated list of paths).
3. ~/.picosentry/plugins/ if it exists.

The bundled picosentry/serve/plugins/ (which ships test_plugin and discord_notifier) is always scanned last. Each plugin lives in its own subdirectory containing plugin.json (manifest) and a Python entry-point module. Manifests are validated against picosentry/serve/services/plugin_manager.py:REQUIRED_MANIFEST_FIELDS and may be Ed25519-signed — the PICOSHOGUN_REQUIRE_SIGNED_PLUGINS=1 env var turns signature verification from a warning into a hard refusal to load.

# Install a plugin in your user-level directory:
mkdir -p ~/.picosentry/plugins/my-plugin
cat > ~/.picosentry/plugins/my-plugin/plugin.json <<'EOF'
{
  "name": "my_plugin",
  "version": "0.1.0",
  "author": "you",
  "description": "on-alert hook example",
  "entry_point": "my_plugin",
  "hooks": ["alert"]
}
EOF
cat > ~/.picosentry/plugins/my-plugin/my_plugin.py <<'EOF'
from picosentry.serve.services.plugin_manager import PluginInterface

class MyPlugin(PluginInterface):
    def initialize(self, config): return True
    def on_alert(self, alert): return alert
EOF

# Or pass it on the command line:
picosentry serve --plugin-dir /opt/picosentry-plugins

# Or set the env var (takes a comma-separated list):
PICOSHOGUN_PLUGIN_DIR=/srv/plugs:/opt/picosentry-plugins picosentry serve

The GET /plugins endpoint returns the resolved directory list in a dirs field alongside the loaded plugin status, so you can verify discovery worked without checking the logs.

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Design principles

• Deterministic: same inputs + same policy = same SHA-256 output. No randomness, no probabilistic scoring, no network dependence. Asserted by --verify-determinism.
• Offline by default: no phone-home, no remote API calls at scan time. Works in air-gapped environments. Online corpus refresh is opt-in via the [scan] extra.
• Typed: full Python type annotations, py.typed shipped.
• Lightweight core: the default install pulls only pyyaml. Heavy deps are gated behind extras.

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Repository structure

picosentry/
    _core/          shared primitives
    scan/           supply-chain scanner (CLI: `picosentry scan`)
    sandbox/        runtime kernel-sandbox (CLI: `picosentry sandbox`, beta)
    watch/          LLM prompt/output guard (CLI: `picosentry watch`, beta)
    serve/          API server + dashboard (CLI: `picosentry serve`, beta)
    experimental.py feature-maturity tracking
examples/
    pypi-obfuscated-setup/    reproducible malicious PyPI fixture
    npm-postinstall-exfil/    reproducible npm post-install fixture
    prompt-injection/         reproducible prompt-injection fixture
docs/
    rules/          per-rule documentation (see picosentry/scan/docs/rules/)
    strategic/      design docs and architecture
    PLUGIN_DEVELOPMENT.md  how to write, sign, and deploy PicoShogun plugins
tests/             test suite

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Where to get help

• Bug reports / feature requests: GitHub Issues
• Security issues (do not file a public issue): see SECURITY.md — email [e-mail] or open a private vulnerability report.
• Questions / discussion: GitHub Discussions
• Contributing: see CONTRIBUTING.md

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License

BUSL-1.1 — see LICENSE and COMMERCIAL-LICENSE.md.