This document analyzes security and privacy implications of implementing the Aifeels specification.

• Maintains emotional state as numerical signals
• Processes discrete events
• Recommends actions based on thresholds
• Provides audit logs

• Authenticate users
• Store sensitive personal data
• Control access to systems
• Encrypt communications

Risk: Malicious events could manipulate emotional state to cause undesired agent behavior.

Example:

• Attacker sends fake user_approved events to lower caution
• Agent proceeds with risky action it should have confirmed

Mitigation:

• Implementations MUST validate event sources
• Use authentication/authorization for event submission
• Consider event signing or integrity checks

Spec Impact: None (implementation concern)

Risk: Audit logs could be modified to hide malicious actions.

Mitigation:

• Implementations SHOULD use append-only logs
• Consider cryptographic log integrity (e.g., Merkle trees)
• Store logs separately from operational state

Spec Impact: None (implementation concern)

Risk: Emotional state reveals information about agent's tasks and decisions.

Example:

• High frustration reveals repeated failures (potential vulnerability)
• Low trust reveals unreliable environment

Mitigation:

• Implementations MUST control access to state queries
• Consider rate-limiting state reads
• Log state access for audit

Spec Impact: None (implementation concern)

Risk: Event flooding could cause state oscillation or resource exhaustion.

Example:

• Rapid task_failed events saturate frustration
• Triggers continuous cooldown_required states

Mitigation:

• Implementations SHOULD rate-limit event processing
• Consider event deduplication
• Apply circuit breakers for runaway escalation

Spec Impact: None (implementation concern)

Risk: Old events could be replayed to manipulate state.

Mitigation:

• Include timestamps in events (already in spec)
• Implementations SHOULD reject stale events
• Consider event nonces or sequence numbers

Spec Impact: Spec already requires timestamps

Risk: Emotional state patterns could reveal user behavior.

Example:

• Frequent user_corrected events → user dissatisfaction
• High urgency patterns → deadline pressure

Mitigation:

• Implementations MUST control access to state history
• Consider data retention limits
• Anonymize logs if sharing for analysis

Spec Impact: None (implementation concern)

Risk: In shared environments, one agent's state could leak to another.

Mitigation:

• Implementations MUST isolate state per agent/session
• No shared emotional state by default
• Clear boundaries for multi-agent coordination (future)

Spec Impact: Spec is single-agent focused (v0.1)

• ✅ Validate event sources (authentication)
• ✅ Control access to state queries (authorization)
• ✅ Isolate state per agent/session
• ✅ Use HTTPS/TLS for network communications

• ✅ Rate-limit event processing
• ✅ Use append-only audit logs
• ✅ Implement event replay protection
• ✅ Log all state access for audit
• ✅ Encrypt state at rest (if persisted)

• ✅ Cryptographic log integrity (Merkle trees)
• ✅ Event signing for non-repudiation
• ✅ Anomaly detection on state patterns
• ✅ Privacy-preserving state sharing (future)

Do NOT report security vulnerabilities in public issues.

Instead:

1. Email: security@aifeels.org (to be set up)
2. Use GitHub's private vulnerability reporting (if enabled)
3. Expect response within 7 days

We follow responsible disclosure:

• 90-day disclosure timeline
• Credit to reporters (if desired)
• CVE assignment if applicable

Security-related spec changes will be:

• Clearly marked in CHANGELOG.md
• Announced via GitHub releases
• Highlighted in release notes

These are NOT covered by this specification:

• ❌ Network security (use TLS)
• ❌ Authentication mechanisms (implementation choice)
• ❌ Access control models (implementation choice)
• ❌ Encryption algorithms (implementation choice)

• OWASP Top 10
• NIST Cybersecurity Framework
• CWE: Common Weakness Enumeration

Last updated: 2025-02-06
Security policy version: 1.0