qiftop-agent is the privileged boundary. It runs as root, owns the system-bus name org.qiftop.NetworkAgent1, and uses the capabilities needed for capture and attribution: CAP_NET_ADMIN, CAP_SYS_PTRACE, CAP_DAC_READ_SEARCH, and CAP_SYS_ADMIN. The shipped systemd unit further restricts it with a capability bound, NoNewPrivileges, ProtectSystem=strict, ProtectHome=yes, PrivateTmp=yes, restricted address families, and RestrictNamespaces=net.

qiftop and nqiftop are unprivileged clients. They prefer the DBus agent and only use in-process capture as a fallback. The agent exposes host-wide counters, conntrack flows, process/container attribution, and GetProcessDetails(pid), so bugs in access control, parsing, disclosure, elevation, handoff IPC, or export sanitisation can be security issues.

qiftop is pre-1.0. Only the latest tagged release receives security fixes; there are no LTS branches.

Please do not file a public GitHub issue for security bugs.

Use GitHub private vulnerability reporting:

1. Go to https://github.com/TheCleaners/qiftop/security/advisories/new.

2. Include the affected version, distro, client (qiftop or nqiftop), agent capability tokens, and a PoC if available. To collect tokens:

   busctl --system get-property org.qiftop.NetworkAgent1 \
     /org/qiftop/NetworkAgent1/Interfaces \
     org.qiftop.NetworkAgent1.Interfaces Capabilities

3. We will triage within 7 days and aim to fix high-severity issues within 30 days. Lower-severity or architectural issues may take longer.

If private reporting is unavailable, open a generic "contact" issue asking for a private channel. Do not include vulnerability details there.

• Local privilege escalation via qiftop-agent or GUI self-elevation (PrivilegeEscalator, HandoffServer / HandoffClient).
• Bypassing the DBus netdev gate for method calls or signal subscription.
• Cross-UID disclosure through GetProcessDetails, especially exe, cwd, or cmdline.
• Bypassing cadence clamps, hint caps, hint expiry, or snapshot bounds to pin unsafe root-agent work.
• Memory-safety bugs in conntrack, netlink, sock_diag, cgroup, or DBus DTO parsing reachable from hostile kernel state or a malicious peer.
• CSV / spreadsheet-injection bugs in exported data.
• Client DBus payload parsing bugs triggerable by a malicious or name-squatting agent, especially on a development session bus.

• Generic local denial of service by users already authorized through netdev, unless it bypasses an explicit safety bound above.
• Bugs in upstream dependencies (Qt, libnl, libnetfilter_conntrack, libdbus, ncurses). Please report those upstream and CC us.
• Resource exhaustion from normal interactive client use, such as opening many filters. Performance patches are welcome, but this is not normally security.
• Distros that omit the bundled DBus policy file (dist/dbus/org.qiftop.NetworkAgent1.conf), which enforces the netdev gate.

• Privilege split: the root agent is the only component that talks to the kernel capture APIs, cross-UID /proc, or container network namespaces.
• DBus access control: the system-bus policy denies agent calls/signals by default, then allows root and netdev members.
• Least-disclosure process details: GetProcessDetails(pid) returns low-sensitivity fields to any authorized caller; by default exe, cwd, and cmdline go only to root or the target process owner.
• Configurable detail policy: /etc/qiftop/agent.conf supports [process_details] disclosure=owner|permissive|restricted plus optional allow_users / allow_groups for restricted cross-UID admin access.
• Cadence and payload bounds: cadence hints are clamped, capped, expire by monotonic TTL, and connection snapshots are capped at 4096 top-talkers.
• Elevation and handoff hardening: elevated children receive an audited environment allowlist and safe fixed PATH; handoff uses a per-user socket, peer credentials, a 0600 nonce file, and capped read buffers.
• CSV export sanitisation: fields starting with formula-trigger characters are prefixed with an apostrophe before export.

See AGENTS.md §4 (DBus contract), §7 (coding conventions), and §8a (process/container attribution lifetime rules) for the detailed rationale.