Excise permanently deletes files and folders. Data-loss defects are therefore security issues even when they do not cross a traditional privacy or permission boundary.

Excise supports the latest stable release, currently 1.2.4. The 0.3.x line was early testing and is superseded. Report safety defects against the affected stable release or development commit. Do not trust superseded releases with irreplaceable data.

Use GitHub's Security tab and Report a vulnerability as the primary private reporting channel. Report issues such as:

• Unintended, over-broad, or incorrectly authorized deletion
• Path, link, junction, mount, or file identity confusion
• Race conditions that invalidate reviewed consent
• Terminal escape injection or failure to restore terminal state
• False claims about unique, shared, allocated, or reclaimable space
• Insecure temporary identity storage
• Dependency or release-integrity vulnerabilities
• Other confidentiality, integrity, or availability defects

If private vulnerability reporting is unavailable, email the lead maintainer at tom.larcher@gmail.com, the public maintainer contact listed in Cargo.toml. Do not open a public issue for an unpatched vulnerability or unintended-deletion path.

Provide the following when it is safe to do so:

• The affected commit or version and operating system
• Exact reproduction steps and commands
• Relevant file system, permission, mount, and link conditions
• Expected and actual behavior
• Whether deletion occurred
• A minimized synthetic fixture
• Any requested disclosure constraints

Do not include sensitive real file system paths when a synthetic reproduction is possible.

Reports are handled on a best-effort basis. Maintainers assess severity, reproducibility, affected safety contracts, supported versions, and disclosure risk. Valid reports receive coordinated fixes and advisories when appropriate. No fixed response time is promised.

Hostile names, links, permissions, and changes made during a scan are in scope. Excise trusts the operating-system kernel. A malicious or permanently unresponsive file system service is outside the current threat model. See docs/architecture/threat-model.md.