# public-key-membership-authorization

> A raw native ownPublicKey selects a required member of preexisting public ledger storage before successful state-changing effects.

Canonical: https://nightshade.dicksonwu.xyz/rules/public-key-membership-authorization.html
Release: Nightshade 0.1.1 (v0.1.1)

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Rule ID | `public-key-membership-authorization` |
| Severity | high |
| Confidence | high |
| Maturity | experimental |
| Selection | Audit default |
| Policy intent | not required |
| Default enabled | yes |
| Category | Audit-default ordinary rules |
| Engine facts used | collection-observations, successful-predicates, successful-histories, private-provenance, state-writes, runtime-operations, completed-entries |
| Release | v0.1.1 |

## Selection and scope

Selected by the default audit profile, so an ordinary scan runs it.

```sh
./.nightshade/node_modules/.bin/nightshade ./contracts --detectors public-key-membership-authorization
./.nightshade/node_modules/.bin/nightshade detector show public-key-membership-authorization
```

The first command runs only this rule; `--detectors` takes a comma-separated list. The second prints the rule's metadata from your installed version.

Severity is review priority. It does not express exploitability or impact. Confidence is detector metadata, not a probability. All built-in rules are experimental.

Compiler scope: the engine supports the pinned profiles 0.28.0, 0.29.0, 0.30.0, 0.31.1, 0.33.0-rc.2, 0.34.0, 0.35.0-rc.1 and 0.35.0, with ZKIR2 by default. Support for this rule can be narrower; the rule documentation below states any narrower scope.

## Corpus checks

Synthetic corpus checks for this rule in the 0.1.1 proof run. A check counts only with compiler acceptance and complete analysis.

| Positive detected | Corrected quiet | Lookalike quiet | Other negative quiet | Incomplete |
| ---: | ---: | ---: | ---: | ---: |
| 9/9 | 6/6 | 6/6 | 3/3 | 0 |

No deviations were recorded for this rule.

These are behavior checks on synthetic fixtures, not a precision or recall estimate. See [evaluation](https://nightshade.dicksonwu.xyz/evaluation.md#synthetic-corpus).

## Rule documentation

From https://github.com/DicksonWu654/nightshade/blob/v0.1.1/docs/detectors/public-key-membership-authorization.md at v0.1.1.

Availability: **default-on**, no policy required. Severity/confidence: **high/high**.
This is a static trust-boundary review candidate. `soleGate` stays **unproven**;
authentication intent, concrete path feasibility and deployed exploitability are
not established. Select this rule alone with
`--detectors public-key-membership-authorization`.

The rule reports a raw canonical native `ownPublicKey` used as the active key of
a required public Map/Set membership query on every modeled successful reach of
an affected effect invocation. Membership in public identity storage does not
establish possession of a secret. Other protocol checks can still apply.
Findings group the enforcing predicate site and exported entry, list affected
ledger/kernel effect invocations and preserve each matching history's immutable
receiver/key, ledger revision, native witness invocation and actual effect positions.

The first boundary is deliberately small:

- Exact completed entry histories under `equivalent-states`, with all predicates
  and existing collection observations. Constructor setup is excluded.
- Canonical `intrinsic::ownPublicKey`, with one exact raw native leaf. Keys may be
  the native `ZswapCoinPublicKey`, its unchanged `Bytes<32>` payload or canonical
  `Either<ZswapCoinPublicKey, ContractAddress>` with a known active public-key arm
  and a default inactive contract-address payload.
- A definite preexisting ledger receiver, no preceding ledger writes
  (`writesBefore === 0`), an unchanged receiver/query revision, and an exact
  immutable collection address. Wildcard regions do not establish equality.
- The exact query-result identity must be required true on that same history.
  Direct assertion/branch polarity, negation and literal Boolean comparison are
  supported. Arbitrary Boolean equalities or compound/unknown encodings are not
  inferred. Optional, bypassed, ignored and negative membership stay quiet.
- Query evaluation must precede its enforcing predicate. The predicate must
  precede each affected write or kernel operation by its recorded write/operation
  positions. Every successful reach of the exact effect invocation is intersected
  before source grouping. Different histories are never merged into one gate.

Arbitrary user witnesses, entry-selected retrieval/payment identities, namesakes,
private-secret hash identities, transformed native keys, inactive Either payloads,
and general lookup-only membership are outside this rule. A supported raw native
membership guard can still be intentional public-identity validation; review the
protocol role. The rule does not establish intended privilege, secrecy/entropy,
replay safety or a sole authentication gate. Guards after effects and receivers
queried after ledger writes remain outside this first release.

Exact observations use the existing entry-isolated rule pass and original
40,000-step/256-path/50,000-value limits; entries share the rule's value allowance.
Consumer matching/intersection is bounded to 1,000,000 checks, with immutable
operand/address traversals limited to 4,096 nodes and depth 32 and Boolean decoding
to depth 64. Exhaustion or missing required invocation evidence produces
rule/entry-scoped incomplete diagnostics and discards that entry's partial
findings. Baseline completion and existing detector findings are preserved.

Acceptance includes optional/bypassed branches, distinct calls/keys/receivers,
changed current storage, nested summary replay, inactive/custom encodings,
operation chronology, scoped budgets and instruction/reference × cached/uncached
agreement. The detector analyzes source evidence; it does not run a witness,
runtime, proof, transaction or exploit reproduction.

Direct facts consumers also use the bounded structural Map/Set applicability
check before requiring observations. Definite absence creates no missing-evidence
error; an exhausted check remains incomplete. This preserves existing List-only
registry consumers without weakening evidence for applicable contracts. The
existing closed terminal-Counter grammar excludes witness calls, including natives;
its experimental scan reuses that `no-witnesses` absence certificate. Other shapes
still fall back to exact analysis; no Counter grammar or budget is broadened.

## Suppress a match

If a match is intentional, suppress it on the line before with the exact rule ID and a reason of at least eight characters:

```compact
// nightshade-disable-next-line public-key-membership-authorization -- Reason this match is intentional
```

Diagnostics cannot be suppressed, and an unmatched directive for a selected rule makes analysis incomplete. See [configuration](https://nightshade.dicksonwu.xyz/configuration.md#suppress-an-intentional-match) for fingerprint suppressions and baselines.

## References

- [Rule source document at v0.1.1](https://github.com/DicksonWu654/nightshade/blob/v0.1.1/docs/detectors/public-key-membership-authorization.md)
- [Catalog entry in rules.json](https://nightshade.dicksonwu.xyz/rules.json)
- [All rules](https://nightshade.dicksonwu.xyz/rules.md#audit-default-ordinary-rules)
- [Limitations](https://nightshade.dicksonwu.xyz/limitations.md)