Read-only recon of the escrow -> recovery chain, from a dead node to an open
repository. No production code, no build, no version bump.
Headline: the hub's superseded-escrow retention does NOT retain the offsite
repository password. host_escrow_superseded has no identity_blob column and
demoteCurrentEscrowTx copies only the K-escrow blob, so what survives a
supersession is the PBS datastore key, not the restic repo password. The next
escrow ceremony -- which the system tells a rebuilt box's customer to run --
destroys the last copy. Both demo boxes crossed that line on 2026-08-04.
Also established:
- the hub's blob-serving endpoints (re-enroll / restore-directive) have zero
callers anywhere: agent, hub UI, scripts, runbooks (R-199)
- POST /backup/offbox/inject-password is routed and handled but no template
contains the form (R-200)
- nothing in the recovery path has ever been exercised; the one live
round-trip proof (2026-06-10) predates the ResticRepoPassword field (R-201)
- a fail-closed mint refusal IS implementable: the report ACK already carries
escrow{identity_blob_present, restic_pw_sha256} and the controller discards
it whenever no offbox target exists
Corrections: yesterday's spike annotated (candidate (b) overturned in part --
unattended recovery is impossible, customer-present is not); capability-map
retention claim struck through and replaced with what the code does.
Deliverable: documentation/audits/RECON-offsite-dr-chain-2026-08-04.md
Register: new R-198..R-201; R-193 and R-192 updated; STATUS.md refreshed.
Part 4 (ships): `david` — a prospective customer with hosts=0, host_deletions=0,
reports=0 — e-mailed an expected_dbdump_missed ERROR at 03:00 UTC three mornings
running. The existing down-skip could never cover it: it reads the staleness
checker's state, which is seeded from a query over the `reports` table, so a
customer that never reported has no state at all and GetState() returns "" rather
than "down". store.HasEverBoundHost (hosts row OR host_deletions tombstone) is
consulted once per customer at the top of the deadline loop. The discriminator is
"was a host EVER bound", never "has a report arrived" — a box installed and never
heard from is a real fault and keeps alarming. Fail-OPEN on a read error. Red-proof
observed: removing the guard fails with `got [expected_dbdump_missed]`, verbatim the
event david sent.
Parts 0-3 (spike, NO production code for R-193/R-192):
audits/SPIKE-offsite-credential-recovery-2026-08-04.md establishes that the one-shot
provider password is the RECOVERABLE secret and the restic repository password is the
irreplaceable one — and that a guest rebuild mints a fresh one, orphaning the previous
off-site history. Measured without touching a box, by comparing
host_escrow.restic_pw_sha256 against host_escrow_superseded: BOTH demo boxes changed
(demo-hp 15 snapshots / 40.9 MB, demo-felhom 36 snapshots / 1.14 GB). demo-felhom's
"lucky" 76-second recovery restored delivery and not the repository, silently, for 13h.
ReissueCredentials does NOT rotate the restic password (R-39's record and two hub
comments are wrong -> R-196); candidate (b) is not implementable against a
zero-knowledge escrow; candidate (a) already exists as F3 and is wired to the wrong
event. Ends in ranked options and an unanswered question for the operator.
R-195 SHIPPED; R-196 + R-197 filed; R-192 + R-193 updated, neither closed.
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