Magazine
BOTTLENECK
Issue 01 · The Untrusted Clone
ArmyknifeLabs
The magazine for engineers becoming AI engineers. Issue 01 is a field guide to SecureGit: why git clone is not a download, how to acquire untrusted code without executing it, and how to prove afterward what arrived. Written by the people who build the tool, for people deciding whether to type one command.
Opening
The Repository Is The Attack Surface
You have spent your career securing what you deploy. The thing you never secured is the moment code arrives on your machine — and that moment now happens dozens of times a week, increasingly without you watching.
git clone is not a download. It is a download plus a filesystem write plus, depending on what is in the archive and what you do next, code execution. Hooks. Submodule configuration. Filter drivers. Path handling quirks that have produced real CVEs in real git releases more than once. The repository is not data that you then choose to run. It is a bundle of data and executable configuration that you have invited onto your machine, inside your home directory, with your permissions.