Requirements

Every change to the source is tracked in a version control system that meets the following requirements:

• [Change history] There exists a record of the history of changes that went into the revision. Each change MUST contain: the identities of the uploader and reviewers (if any), timestamps of the reviews (if any) and submission, the change description/justification, the content of the change, and the parent revisions.

• [Immutable reference] There exists a way to indefinitely reference this particular, immutable revision. In git, this is the {repo URL + branch/tag/ref + commit ID}.

Most popular version control system meet this requirement, such as git, Mercurial, Subversion, or Perforce.

NOTE: This does NOT require that the code, uploader/reviewer identities, or change history be made public. Rather, some organization MUST attest to the fact that these requirements are met, and it is up to the consumer whether this attestation is sufficient.

“○” = RECOMMENDED.

Every change in the revision’s history has at least one strongly authenticated actor identity (author, uploader, reviewer, etc.) and timestamp. It MUST be clear which identities were verified, and those identities MUST use two-step verification or similar. (Exceptions noted below.)

• [First-parent history] In the case of a non-linear version control system, where a revision can have more than one parent, only the “first parent history” is in scope. In other words, when a feature branch is merged back into the main branch, only the merge itself is in scope.
• [Historical cutoff] There is some TBD exception to allow existing projects to meet SLSA 3/4 even if historical revisions were present in the history. Current thinking is that this could be either last N months or a platform attestation guaranteeing that future changes in the next N months will meet the requirements.

The revision and its change history are preserved indefinitely and cannot be deleted, except when subject to an established and transparent policy for obliteration, such as a legal or policy requirement.

• [Immutable history] It MUST NOT be possible for persons to delete or modify the history, even with multi-party approval, except by trusted platform admins with two-party approval following the obliterate policy.
• [Limited retention for SLSA 3] At SLSA 3 (but not 4), it is acceptable for the retention to be limited to 18 months, as attested by the source control platform.
  • Example: If a commit is made on 2020-04-05 and then a retention attestation is generated on 2021-01-01, the commit MUST be retained until at least 2022-07-01.

Every change in the revision’s history was agreed to by two trusted persons prior to submission, and both of these trusted persons were strongly authenticated. (Exceptions from Verified History apply here as well.)

• The following combinations are acceptable:
  • Uploader and reviewer are two different trusted persons.
  • Two different reviewers are trusted persons.
• [Different persons] The platform ensures that no person can use alternate identities to bypass the two-person review requirement.
  • Example: if a person uploads with identity X then reviews with alias Y, the platform understands that this is the same person and does not consider the review requirement satisfied.
• [Informed review] The reviewer is able and encouraged to make an informed decision about what they’re approving. The reviewer SHOULD be presented with a full, meaningful content diff between the proposed revision and the previously reviewed revision. For example, it is not sufficient to just indicate that file changed without showing the contents.
• [Context-specific approvals] Approvals are for a specific context, such as a repo + branch in git. Moving fully reviewed content from one context to another still requires review. (Exact definition of “context” depends on the project, and this does not preclude well-understood automatic or reviewless merges, such as cutting a release branch.)
  • Git example: If a fully reviewed commit in one repo is merged into a different repo, or a commit in one branch is merged into a different branch, then the merge still requires review.

All build steps were fully defined in some sort of “build script”. The only manual command, if any, was to invoke the build script.

Examples:

• Build script is Makefile, invoked via make all.
• Build script is .github/workflows/build.yaml, invoked by GitHub Actions.

All build steps ran using some build service, not on a developer’s workstation.

Examples: GitHub Actions, Google Cloud Build, Travis CI.

The build definition and configuration executed by the build service is verifiably derived from text file definitions stored in a version control system.

Verifiably derived can mean either fetched directly through a trusted channel, or that the derived definition has some trustworthy provenance chain linking back to version control.

Examples:

• .github/workflows/build.yaml stored in git
• Tekton bundles generated from text files by a SLSA compliant build process and stored in an OCI registry with SLSA provenance metadata available.

The build service ensured that the build steps ran in an ephemeral environment, such as a container or VM, provisioned solely for this build, and not reused from a prior build.

The build service ensured that the build steps ran in an isolated environment free of influence from other build instances, whether prior or concurrent.

• It MUST NOT be possible for a build to access any secrets of the build service, such as the provenance signing key.
• It MUST NOT be possible for two builds that overlap in time to influence one another.
• It MUST NOT be possible for one build to persist or influence the build environment of a subsequent build.
• Build caches, if used, MUST be purely content-addressable to prevent tampering.

The build output cannot be affected by user parameters other than the build entry point and the top-level source location. In other words, the build is fully defined through the build script and nothing else.

Examples:

• GitHub Actions workflow_dispatch inputs MUST be empty.
• Google Cloud Build user-defined substitutions MUST be empty. (Default substitutions, whose values are defined by the server, are acceptable.)

All transitive build steps, sources, and dependencies were fully declared up front with immutable references, and the build steps ran with no network access.

The user-defined build script:

• MUST declare all dependencies, including sources and other build steps, using immutable references in a format that the build service understands.

The build service:

• MUST fetch all artifacts in a trusted control plane.
• MUST NOT allow mutable references.
• MUST verify the integrity of each artifact.
  • If the immutable reference includes a cryptographic hash, the service MUST verify the hash and reject the fetch if the verification fails.
  • Otherwise, the service MUST fetch the artifact over a channel that ensures transport integrity, such as TLS or code signing.
• MUST prevent network access while running the build steps.
  • This requirement is “best effort.” It SHOULD deter a reasonable team from having a non-hermetic build, but it need not stop a determined adversary. For example, using a container to prevent network access is sufficient.

Re-running the build steps with identical input artifacts results in bit-for-bit identical output. Builds that cannot meet this MUST provide a justification why the build cannot be made reproducible.

“○” means that this requirement is “best effort”. The user-provided build script SHOULD declare whether the build is intended to be reproducible or a justification why not. The build service MAY blindly propagate this intent without verifying reproducibility. A consumer MAY reject the build if it does not reproduce.

The provenance is available to the consumer in a format that the consumer accepts. The format SHOULD be in-toto SLSA Provenance, but another format MAY be used if both producer and consumer agree and it meets all the other requirements.

The provenance’s authenticity and integrity can be verified by the consumer. This SHOULD be through a digital signature from a private key accessible only to the service generating the provenance.

The data in the provenance MUST be obtained from the build service (either because the generator is the build service or because the provenance generator reads the data directly from the build service).

Regular users of the service MUST NOT be able to inject or alter the contents, except as noted below.

The following provenance fields MAY be generated by the user-controlled build steps:

• The output artifact hash from Identifies Artifact.
  • Reasoning: This only allows a “bad” build to falsely claim that it produced a “good” artifact. This is not a security problem because the consumer MUST accept only “good” builds and reject “bad” builds.
• The “reproducible” boolean and justification from Reproducible.

Provenance cannot be falsified by the build service’s users.

NOTE: This requirement is a stricter version of Service Generated.

• Any secret material used to demonstrate the non-falsifiable nature of the provenance, for example the signing key used to generate a digital signature, MUST be stored in a secure management system appropriate for such material and accessible only to the build service account.
• Such secret material MUST NOT be accessible to the environment running the user-defined build steps.
• Every field in the provenance MUST be generated or verified by the build service in a trusted control plane. The user-controlled build steps MUST NOT be able to inject or alter the contents, except as noted below.

The following provenance fields MAY be generated by the user-controlled build steps without the build service verifying their correctness:

• The output artifact hash from Identifies Artifact.
  • Reasoning: This only allows a “bad” build to falsely claim that it produced a “good” artifact. This is not a security problem because the consumer MUST accept only “good” builds and reject “bad” builds.
• The “reproducible” boolean and justification from Reproducible.

Provenance records all build dependencies that were available while running the build steps. This includes the initial state of the machine, VM, or container of the build worker.

• MUST include all user-specified build steps, sources, dependencies.
• SHOULD include all service-provided artifacts.

The provenance MUST identify the output artifact via at least one cryptographic hash. The provenance MAY provide multiple identifying cryptographic hashes using different algorithms. When only one hash is provided, the RECOMMENDED algorithm is SHA-256 for cross-system compatibility. If another algorithm is used, it SHOULD be resistant to collisions and second preimages.

The provenance identifies the entity that performed the build and generated the provenance. This represents the entity that the consumer MUST trust. Examples: “GitHub Actions with a GitHub-hosted worker”, “jdoe@example.com’s machine”.

The provenance identifies the top-level instructions used to execute the build.

The identified instructions SHOULD be at the highest level available to the build (e.g. if the build is told to run build.sh it SHOULD list build.sh and NOT the individual instructions in build.sh).

If build-as-code is used, this SHOULD be the source repo and entry point of the build config (as in the GitHub Actions example).

If the build isn’t defined in code it MAY list the details of what it was asked to do (as in the Google Cloud Build RPC example or the Explicitly Run Commands example).

The provenance identifies the repository origin(s) for the source code used in the build.

The identified repositories SHOULD only include source used directly in the build. The source of dependencies SHOULD NOT be included.

At level 2 this information MAY come from users and DOES NOT need to be authenticated by the builder.

At level 3+ this information MUST be authenticated by the builder (i.e. the builder either needs to have fetched the source itself or observed the fetch).

At level 4 this information MUST be complete (i.e. all source repositories used in the build are listed).

The provenance identifies the “entry point” of the build definition (see build-as-code) used to drive the build including what source repo the configuration was read from.

Example:

• source repo: git URL + branch/tag/ref + commit ID
• entrypoint: path to config file(s) (e.g. ./.zuul.yaml) + job name within config (e.g. envoy-build-arm64)

The provenance includes all build parameters under a user’s control. See Parameterless for details. (At L3, the parameters MUST be listed; at L4, they MUST be empty.)

The provenance includes all transitive dependencies listed in Dependencies Complete.

The provenance includes a boolean indicating whether build is intended to be reproducible and, if so, all information necessary to reproduce the build. See Reproducible for more details.

The provenance includes metadata to aid debugging and investigations. This SHOULD at least include start and end timestamps and a unique identifier to allow finding detailed debug logs.

“○” = RECOMMENDED.

The system meets some TBD baseline security standard to prevent compromise. (Patching, vulnerability scanning, user isolation, transport security, secure boot, machine identity, etc. Perhaps NIST 800-53 or a subset thereof.)

All physical and remote access MUST be rare, logged, and gated behind multi-party approval.

Only a small number of platform admins MAY override the guarantees listed here. Doing so MUST require approval of a second platform admin.