Response to incident WA-2026-10-27 (the std::vector max_size() crash). Deep
research archived under research/safe-cpp-practices (8 Tier 1, 37 Tier 2, 2
conclusions) on production-safe C++ that keeps development speed: OpenSSF
compiler hardening, the C++ Core Guidelines bounds profile, integer-overflow
practice, libFuzzer/sanitizer CI, the sanitizer overhead ladder, clang-tidy
ratchets.
The research prescribed an ASan+UBSan+_GLIBCXX_ASSERTIONS build of the parsers.
Standing it up immediately caught a second, independent undefined-behavior bug
that two manual reviews had missed: a protobuf varint loop that shifted by up
to 70 bits (shift >= 64 is UB) on malformed input. Fixed and guarded by a
deterministic test and the sanitizer net.
- src/whatsapp/wa_proto.cpp: guard the wire-0 varint shift (the UB).
- tests/whatsapp_test.cpp: add an overlong-varint hostile case.
- tools/san-whatsapp.sh: the standing sanitizer net for detz::wa parsers.
- WaClient frame capture: a frame that fails to decode/dispatch has its exact
bytes recorded to <home>/whatsapp/last-error.log (bounded), so the still
unreproduced live <iq> failure becomes a one-paste deterministic fix. Wired
from the wizard and the whatsapp_send tool.
- docs/cpp-safety.md: the project-wide playbook and design decisions (four
layers: overflow-safe checked-reader parsing, cheap release hardening, the
sanitizer test net, capture). docs/whatsapp.md section 13.6 records the
follow-up and the honest open item. AGENTS.md makes it a standing rule;
cap.md and mcp.md inherit it for their wire parsers.
Verified: build, whatsapp_test (incl. hostile+fuzz), make lint, and
tools/san-whatsapp.sh all green; research audit PASS.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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