# 13.7 Threats Out of Scope

_Peios / Advanced Peios / peipkg / Security_

> What the package manager explicitly does not defend against, and where each of those concerns is addressed instead.

The following are explicitly outside what the package manager defends
against. Each is a real concern; each is addressed elsewhere.

**Compromise of an installing operator's identity.** peipkg runs with
the operator's authority (§13.1). If that identity is compromised, no
format-level defence helps. The kernel's own audit and recovery
mechanisms apply.

**Side-channel attacks on installed binaries.** Speculative-execution,
cache-timing, and similar attacks against installed software are the
kernel's concern and the software's, not the package format's.

**Physical attacks on storage.** A physically compromised disk can have
its package database or installed files altered offline. Hash
verification at use time — outside the package manager — is the
appropriate defence.

**Compromise of the build farm.** A compromised farm can sign malicious
packages with trusted keys. Detection requires independent
reproducible-build verification (§12.7).

The build farm identifier recorded in each manifest can be constrained
per repository as defence in depth — refusing packages from a farm not
on a configured allowlist. That is not implemented, and it would protect
only against a stale farm whose key was rotated but whose identifier is
still recognised, or against an attacker who obtained a key without the
farm's operational identity. It is not a format-level guarantee.

**Network-level censorship or denial of service** preventing package
fetching. An operational concern.

> [!NOTE]
> These exclusions are honest acknowledgements rather than weaknesses to
> dismiss. What they have in common is that each sits either below the
> package manager — where the kernel is the right layer — or above it,
> where the operator's judgement about what to trust is the only thing
> that can help.