fix(security): use argv arrays for docker and curl to prevent shell injection

[dumko2001]

Rationale

Executing commands as strings in a shell is vulnerable to injection attacks if any part of the string contains untrusted or unescaped input.

Changes

Refactored internal calls to docker and curl to use argv arrays with spawnSync, bypassing the shell and eliminating shell injection risks.

Verification Results

• Automated Tests: Passed all 52 core tests via npm test.
• Manual Audit: Verified correct execution of multi-part commands.
• Security Review: Verified elimination of shell injection vectors.

Leading Standards

This PR follows the project's 'First Principles' approach, prioritizing deterministic behavior and zero-trust security defaults.

Summary by CodeRabbit

• Refactor
  • Standardized how external commands are invoked to improve reliability across local inference, sandbox, and provider flows.
• Bug Fixes
  • More consistent reachability and health checks for local model services and containerized components.
  • More robust GPU, memory and port detection and safer sandbox lifecycle operations.

[cv]

Hey @dumko2001, thanks for tackling shell injection prevention here — that's an important hardening measure. This repo has been moving pretty fast lately; we've added CI checks and a bunch of new features since this PR was opened. Could you rebase onto the latest main so we can take a fresh look? Appreciate it!

[dumko2001]

@cv got superseded :(

[cv]

The security goal is sound — argv arrays eliminate shell injection. But the implementation has issues.

runCapture() encoding bug

The patch switches from execSync (which returns a string with encoding: "utf-8") to spawnSync with stdio: "pipe". With spawnSync, result.stdout is a Buffer unless encoding is explicitly set — but ...opts at the end of the options object can override encoding. The code calls .trim() on the result, which will throw on a Buffer.

Incomplete coverage

Only docker and curl calls in nim.js are converted. The codebase still has shell pipelines that can't be expressed as argv arrays (e.g., "free -m | awk '/Mem:/ {print $2}'" in nim.js). The dual-mode run() that accepts either strings or arrays creates ambiguity about which pattern callers should use.

Overlap

• #721 (gateway isolation) restructures startup paths and runner patterns — high conflict risk
• #696 (download-then-execute) also hardens curl patterns in the same codebase
• The existing shellQuote() and validateName() in runner.js already prevent injection for user-supplied input at the callsites that matter most

No CI

Zero workflow runs. The "passed all 52 tests" claim in the description is self-reported.

Recommendation

The argv approach is correct in principle, but landing a partial conversion alongside the existing shell-quoting approach creates two competing patterns. Consider either:

1. Scope down to only new code paths, or
2. Commit to converting all callsites (including pipelines, which would need restructuring)

Either way, fix the encoding bug and get CI running first.

[coderabbitai]

📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

Refactors process invocation across the codebase: shell-interpolated command strings are replaced with argv-style arrays, runner utilities now require/execute argv arrays via spawnSync, and callers (inference, onboarding, policies, preflight, registry) were updated to pass structured arguments and to avoid shell redirections/quoting.

Changes

Cohort / File(s)	Summary
Core runner bin/lib/runner.js	run and runCapture now require argv arrays and call spawnSync(exe, args); stdio/env handling, error reporting, and output normalization updated.
Local inference bin/lib/local-inference.js	Rewrote health-checks, probes, warmups, and docker reachability commands from shell strings to argv arrays; removed shell redirections and quoting; ollama list and related commands tokenized.
Nim & Docker flows bin/lib/nim.js	Replaced shell pipelines and string commands (nvidia-smi, free -m, sysctl, docker pull/run/stop/rm) with argv-array executions; updated health check URLs to use sandbox nimPort.
Onboarding / Sandbox setup bin/lib/onboard.js	streamSandboxCreate now accepts exe+args; many run/runCapture callers converted to argv arrays (openshell, docker, cp/rm, which/curl); env injection and stdin handling for sandbox connect adjusted.
Policies bin/lib/policies.js	buildPolicySetCommand and buildPolicyGetCommand now return argv arrays instead of shell strings; removed shell error-suppression and quoting.
Preflight / Port checks bin/lib/preflight.js	lsof probe changed from shell string to argv-array (which/lsof -i ...) while preserving parsing and fallback behavior.
Registry bin/lib/registry.js	registerSandbox now stores a nimPort field (defaults to 8000) on registered sandboxes.

Estimated code review effort

🎯 4 (Complex) | ⏱️ ~65 minutes

Poem

🐰 I swapped my strings for tidy arrays, hooray—
No stray redirects to lead me astray.
Commands march neatly, each token in line,
The rabbit approves this tidy design. 🥕

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 2 | ❌ 1

❌ Failed checks (1 warning)

Check name	Status	Explanation	Resolution
Docstring Coverage	⚠️ Warning	Docstring coverage is 0.00% which is insufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%.	Write docstrings for the functions missing them to satisfy the coverage threshold.

✅ Passed checks (2 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Description Check	✅ Passed	Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check	✅ Passed	The title accurately describes the main objective of the changeset: refactoring shell command execution to use argv arrays for docker and curl commands to prevent shell injection vulnerabilities.

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✨ Finishing Touches

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests

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[coderabbitai]

Actionable comments posted: 4

🤖 Prompt for all review comments with AI agents

Verify each finding against the current code and only fix it if needed.

Inline comments:
In `@bin/lib/nim.js`:
- Around line 193-205: nimStatus currently probes a hard-coded port 8000 which
breaks non-default-port sandboxes; update nimStatus to use the same port chosen
by startNimContainer()/waitForNimHealth() by either adding a port parameter to
nimStatus or by reading the persisted port from the sandbox metadata (the same
place startNimContainer stores the selected port), then replace the fixed
"http://localhost:8000/v1/models" probe with a probe using that port; ensure any
callers of nimStatus (and tests) pass or can access the sandbox port so health
checks reflect the actual container port.

In `@bin/lib/onboard.js`:
- Around line 564-575: The current code pushes secrets into envArgs (see envArgs
and getCredential usage) and passes them on the command line to the long-running
"openshell sandbox create" invocation, which exposes them via ps/proc; stop
adding NVIDIA_API_KEY, DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN and SLACK_BOT_TOKEN to envArgs and
instead inject them securely: either (a) invoke "openshell sandbox create"
without secrets and then call a post-create step (e.g., "openshell sandbox
connect" or an equivalent API) to send secrets over stdin/pipe, or (b) write the
secrets to a protected temp file (mode 0600) and provide that file to the
process or API, removing it immediately after use; update the code paths that
build envArgs (references: envArgs, getCredential) and the place that spawns
"openshell sandbox create" to use one of these secure injection methods and
ensure the temp file or pipe is cleaned up and not left on disk.
- Around line 245-248: The code incorrectly tries to run the shell builtin
"command -v" via spawnSync in runCapture, causing ENOENT in functions
isOpenshellInstalled and setupNim and in checkPort; replace those invocations
with a proper PATH lookup (e.g., use the "which" binary or the which npm package
or Node's fs+process.env.PATH lookup) instead of spawning "command", updating
isOpenshellInstalled(), setupNim(), and checkPort() to call the PATH utility or
helper. Also avoid passing secrets as argv in envArgs passed into
streamSandboxCreate/spawn(); move NVIDIA_API_KEY, DISCORD_BOT_TOKEN,
SLACK_BOT_TOKEN into the child process environment (env object) when creating
the sandbox so sensitive values are not exposed via process arguments or
ps/cmdline.

In `@bin/lib/runner.js`:
- Around line 24-29: The spawn options currently spread ...opts after
constructing env so an opts.env value replaces the merged environment; fix by
building the options so env is set last as a merged object (e.g., create an
options object where env: { ...process.env, ...opts.env } is assigned after
spreading opts or by spreading opts first and then overriding env), and use that
when calling spawnSync in run (the spawnSync call around const result =
spawnSync(...)) and apply the identical change in runCapture; ensure you do not
leave ...opts after env which would overwrite the merged env.

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ℹ️ Review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Path: .coderabbit.yaml

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro

Run ID: ee1a81ec-592e-4c57-afe9-3df35d6d18b9

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 6e1208c and 3f78e93.

📒 Files selected for processing (6)

• bin/lib/local-inference.js
• bin/lib/nim.js
• bin/lib/onboard.js
• bin/lib/policies.js
• bin/lib/preflight.js
• bin/lib/runner.js

[coderabbitai]

🧹 Nitpick comments (1)

bin/lib/nim.js (1)

163-184: Minor: safePort is computed but not used in the URL.

Line 166 computes safePort = Number(port) but Line 171 uses port directly. This doesn't create a security issue since the URL is passed as an argv element (no shell parsing), but for consistency you could use safePort in the URL template.

♻️ Optional consistency fix

     try {
-      const result = runCapture(["curl", "-sf", `http://localhost:${port}/v1/models`], {
+      const result = runCapture(["curl", "-sf", `http://localhost:${safePort}/v1/models`], {
         ignoreError: true,
       });

🤖 Prompt for AI Agents

Verify each finding against the current code and only fix it if needed.

In `@bin/lib/nim.js` around lines 163 - 184, In waitForNimHealth, safePort is
computed but the curl URL still uses port; update the runCapture call to
interpolate safePort (i.e., change `http://localhost:${port}/v1/models` to
`http://localhost:${safePort}/v1/models`) so the function consistently uses the
sanitized numeric port value (symbols: waitForNimHealth, safePort, port,
runCapture).

🤖 Prompt for all review comments with AI agents

Verify each finding against the current code and only fix it if needed.

Nitpick comments:
In `@bin/lib/nim.js`:
- Around line 163-184: In waitForNimHealth, safePort is computed but the curl
URL still uses port; update the runCapture call to interpolate safePort (i.e.,
change `http://localhost:${port}/v1/models` to
`http://localhost:${safePort}/v1/models`) so the function consistently uses the
sanitized numeric port value (symbols: waitForNimHealth, safePort, port,
runCapture).

---

ℹ️ Review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Path: .coderabbit.yaml

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro

Run ID: 5031168d-d68e-4196-8849-982c8b042aa4

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 3f78e93 and b996722.

📒 Files selected for processing (7)

• bin/lib/local-inference.js
• bin/lib/nim.js
• bin/lib/onboard.js
• bin/lib/policies.js
• bin/lib/preflight.js
• bin/lib/registry.js
• bin/lib/runner.js

🚧 Files skipped from review as they are similar to previous changes (4)

• bin/lib/policies.js
• bin/lib/local-inference.js
• bin/lib/preflight.js
• bin/lib/runner.js