argus is a local, keyboard-driven control plane for a Proxmox homelab. It can hold credentials for Proxmox, Salt, Nomad, storage, media, DNS, certificate, and security services, and it can trigger privileged operations. Treat a machine that runs argus as a trusted administration workstation.

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

Please do not open a public issue for a security problem.

Use GitHub's private vulnerability reporting:

1. Open the repository's Security tab.
2. Choose Advisories → Report a vulnerability.
3. Include affected version/commit, reproduction steps, impact, and any suggested fix.

You can expect an acknowledgement within a few business days. Please give us a reasonable window to release a fix before public disclosure. We will credit reporters who want to be credited.

• Trusted local machine. The TUI, MCP server, and local SQLite database are trusted components. Anyone who can run code as your user can read the credentials available to that user.
• Credentials. Secrets should live in the operating-system keychain: macOS Keychain, Linux Secret Service, or Windows Credential Manager. The config file is written with mode 0600 and is a fallback, not the preferred secret store. Cloud-init profile passwords and Servarr API keys are stored in the local database/config; protect backups accordingly.
• Proxmox API tokens. Prefer a dedicated Proxmox user and a token with the smallest role that supports the operations you need. The bundled installer's --token option creates root@pam!argus with privsep=0 for convenience; that token is root-equivalent. Revoke it with pveum user token remove root@pam argus and create a scoped token if that is too broad for your environment.
• TLS. TLS verification is on by default. insecure = true / insecure flags disable verification and should only be used for a documented self-signed service. Prefer installing the service CA. step-ca's fingerprint is pinned: argus fetches the CA root, verifies its SHA-256 fingerprint, and then uses that root as the TLS trust anchor.
• Metrics endpoint. argus-metrics-server / the embedded exporter expose metrics over HTTP with no authentication. They bind to 127.0.0.1:9099 by default. Do not bind to 0.0.0.0 without a firewall or an authenticated reverse proxy.
• MCP server. argus-mcp-server is a local stdio server. Any process that can launch it and speak MCP can invoke its tools, including VM power operations and Salt state applications. Do not expose it over a network without an authenticated broker.
• Runbooks. shell runbook steps execute arbitrary commands on Salt minions via cmd.run. Runbooks are high-trust automation; review them before running and restrict who can edit them.
• Terminal output. Data returned by remote services is sanitized before rendering (control characters, ANSI escapes, and bidi overrides are removed) to prevent terminal escape injection from guest names, logs, alerts, or media metadata.

• Use a dedicated Proxmox API user/token with least privilege.
• Store the token/password in the OS keychain, not a shell history or repo.
• Keep the config file (~/.config/argus/config.toml or /etc/argus/config.toml) at mode 0600.
• Keep the database and its backups private; they can contain cloud-init passwords and provisioning metadata.
• Leave insecure = false unless a self-signed endpoint is unavoidable.
• Keep the metrics listener on loopback or behind an authenticated proxy.
• Run govulncheck ./... and update the Go toolchain regularly.
• Treat MCP clients and runbooks as privileged administrators.