primer-scout is an offline command-line tool that processes user-supplied FASTA references and primer panels. It is designed to be safe to run against untrusted input files, but it is not a sandbox: treat it like any other local CLI you run on your own machine.

Security fixes are applied to the latest main and the most recent tagged release.

Please do not open a public issue for a sensitive vulnerability.

Instead, use GitHub's private Report a vulnerability flow, which keeps the report confidential until a fix is available.

When reporting, include:

• a description of the issue and its impact,
• the version or commit affected,
• and, where possible, a minimal input file or command that reproduces it.

You can expect an initial acknowledgement within a few days. Once a fix is ready, it will be released and the reporter credited (unless anonymity is requested).

These protections ship by default:

• Untrusted-input resource guards. Per-line, per-file, and per-contig size limits bound memory and CPU use so a malformed or hostile file cannot trivially exhaust resources. Limits are tunable via the PRIMER_SCOUT_MAX_* environment variables (see the README).
• Session-file confinement. Console history is written under $HOME/.primer-scout/ with restricted permissions (0700 directory, 0600 file on Unix). A PRIMER_SCOUT_SESSION_FILE override is path-sanitized and cannot escape that directory, and symlinked targets are rejected.
• Scanner resolution. The interactive console invokes the scanner binary installed alongside it (via the current executable's directory) rather than resolving the bare name through PATH, avoiding binary-planting on platforms whose PATH search includes the current directory.
• No telemetry. The only outbound network request is an optional GitHub release check over HTTPS, which can be disabled with PRIMER_SCOUT_NO_UPDATE_CHECK=1.
• Dependency auditing. CI runs cargo audit against the advisory database on every push and pull request.

primer-scout is a research and engineering tool. It is not a medical device and must not be used for clinical decision-making (see the README's clinical disclaimer).