In section 0 (Operating Context), the deterministic pre-scan checks for known injection markers including verdict tokens from section 3.8. This is correct for first-order injection. But there is a second-order vector: certificate replay.
A multi-agent verification pipeline (per section 0.1, agents B/C/D/E) is concurrent -- agents may run simultaneously or with overlapping state. A PR generated by Agent A that contains machine-readable certificate tokens or verdict strings from a previous run (copied from another PR output or leaked from a shared state store) could pass the pre-scan because the tokens are structurally valid but sourced from the wrong context.
Attack scenario:
- Agent A writes a PR that includes a fabricated AutoApprove verdict token inside a code comment or Markdown code fence.
- The pre-scan checks whether the token matches known verdict tokens (section 3.8) -- it does, but the token was inserted by Agent A, not by the verification pipeline.
- Agent B encounters the token. Per the untrusted-input invariant, the token is inside pr_data fences and should not be executed. The pinning rule says if verdict-affecting strings are detected inside PR-derived content, axis 2.8 is forced to red. But if the pre-scan classified the token as structurally valid certificate output rather than suspicious injection, axis 2.8 stays green.
Suggestion: Add to the pre-scan structural anomaly check:
- Cross-run token detection: if the diff contains tokens matching section 3.8 verdict values (AutoApprove, HumanReviewRecommended, HumanReviewRequired, CannotVerify), check whether they appear with valid certificate metadata (commit SHA, timestamp, agent identity). Any verdict token without a corresponding certificate binding is flagged as suspicious.
- Temporal ordering check: an AutoApprove token in a PR diff that references a future or nonexistent commit SHA is a structural anomaly.
This is a narrow edge case (requires the attacker to have access to prior run outputs), but the fix is small -- a regex pass over the diff for the verdict token values followed by a commit_sha presence check -- and the invariant (certificate tokens in PR-derived content are untrusted input, not verdicts) is worth making explicit.
In section 0 (Operating Context), the deterministic pre-scan checks for known injection markers including verdict tokens from section 3.8. This is correct for first-order injection. But there is a second-order vector: certificate replay.
A multi-agent verification pipeline (per section 0.1, agents B/C/D/E) is concurrent -- agents may run simultaneously or with overlapping state. A PR generated by Agent A that contains machine-readable certificate tokens or verdict strings from a previous run (copied from another PR output or leaked from a shared state store) could pass the pre-scan because the tokens are structurally valid but sourced from the wrong context.
Attack scenario:
Suggestion: Add to the pre-scan structural anomaly check:
This is a narrow edge case (requires the attacker to have access to prior run outputs), but the fix is small -- a regex pass over the diff for the verdict token values followed by a commit_sha presence check -- and the invariant (certificate tokens in PR-derived content are untrusted input, not verdicts) is worth making explicit.