Protocol 3.5Development
Approval Rigor
Measures the ratio of PRs that receive meaningful human approval versus those merged without review.
High approval rigor means changes are verified before landing. Low rigor means governance exists on paper but not in practice.
Incidents that failed this protocol
SolarWindsDec 2020civilizational
SUNBURST malware injected into Orion build pipeline compromises 18,000 organisations
Approval rigor on build-pipeline changes was insufficient to prevent unauthorised modification of build steps.
OktaOct 2023enterprise
Okta support-portal HAR file leak exposes 134 customer environments
Approval rigor on service-account scope: account had broader read access to the support system than its function required.
xz utils (Tukaani Project)Mar 2024civilizational
CVE-2024-3094 — multi-year social-engineering attack inserts backdoor into xz/liblzma
Approval rigor on build-system changes was insufficient — modifications to m4 macros and test fixtures merged without independent review.
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