I dismissed this finding from the code review as a false positive, reasoning
that Akka's ActorBase caches Self in a field and that three passing
anti-entropy tests traverse the path. Both premises were wrong. Self resolves
through Context, which is [ThreadStatic], and throws NotSupportedException once
a continuation resumes on a thread-pool thread.
The tests passed because a local SQLite store usually completes await
SYNCHRONOUSLY, so the continuation stayed on the mailbox thread and the context
was still intact. Correctness therefore depended on store latency and
thread-pool timing: green here, broken under a slower or contended store, with
the only symptom a per-peer warning every announce interval while nodes
silently stopped converging. The live-broadcast fast path masked it further —
only the anti-entropy repair path was dead.
Captures self on the actor thread and passes it in. Adds
GenuinelyAsyncSecretStore to force the async path, a regression test that fails
on the unfixed code (20s timeout) and passes in 3s after, and
ActorContextAfterAwaitTests pinning the underlying Akka behaviour so the wrong
assumption cannot be made again. Audited every remaining Self/Sender access in
the actor.
170 pass offline / 184 with the live SQL suite / 1 skip / 0 warnings.
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01BL2Vu1ESDQ9SCN4gVKkdts
Secrets were per-node SQLite, so a secret written on one node was invisible to
the rest of a cluster. G-7's design resolved the "shared SQL store vs Akka
replicator" fork to build only the former; both are built here so the choice is
a deployment decision (availability vs partition tolerance) rather than a
library limitation.
Two new packages — ZB.MOM.WW.Secrets.Replicator.SqlServer (shared store, plus a
local-store-with-hub mode) and .Replicator.AkkaDotNet (peer-to-peer over
distributed pub/sub). Core gains ISecretsStoreMigrator, one shared
SecretLastWriterWins predicate so no two stores can disagree on a tie, the
transport-agnostic reconciler, and ReplicatingSecretStore — which closes a real
gap: nothing had ever called ISecretReplicator.PublishAsync, so the seam was
inert and local writes would not have propagated at all.
Verified 182 pass / 1 skip / 0 warnings, including 15 live tests against a real
SQL Server 2022 (the SQLite suite ported case-for-case, so any behavioural
divergence between the stores fails) and a 9-test in-process 2-node Akka
cluster over real remoting. A post-build review caught six defects, all fixed
and now covered: both replication modes could not resolve from the container
(no test had built one), an unbounded fetch that broke past SQL Server's
2100-parameter cap, a poison row that aborted the rest of its batch forever,
Enum.Parse on peer input that could restart the actor in a loop, null crypto
blobs crossing the trust boundary, and a silently dropped pull-read failure.
Packed at 0.2.0 and vulnerability-scanned clean; not yet published to the feed.
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01BL2Vu1ESDQ9SCN4gVKkdts
G-8 (KEK rotation) — built in ZB.MOM.WW.Secrets, lib 0.1.2->0.1.3:
- ISecretCipher.Rewrap(row, oldKek, newKek): re-wraps the per-secret DEK only
(bodies never re-encrypted; revision/timestamps preserved -> invisible to
cluster LWW). Fail-closed on wrong old-KEK id, wrong key bytes, and malformed
wraps; DEK zeroed on all paths.
- ISecretStore.ApplyRewrapAsync(rewrappedRow, expectedCurrentWrappedDek):
updates only the 4 wrap columns + kek_id, compare-and-swap on the current
wrapped DEK so a concurrent set/rotate cannot corrupt a row (closes a
review-caught TOCTOU).
- KekRotationService.RewrapAllAsync + RewrapReport: enumerate all rows incl.
tombstones, idempotent/resumable skip-already-current, bounded CAS-retry,
fail-closed on unknown/identical KEK.
- `secret rewrap-all` CLI verb: key material only via env-var name / file path,
JSON counts report; README section + operator runbook.
Verified: full offline suite green (82 core + 15 UI, 0 regressions) + end-to-end
CLI smoke + adversarial crypto review (all 7 categories PASS; TOCTOU fixed).
G-7 (clustered replication) — designed + planned, no code:
- Fork resolved to build Option A (shared SQL-Server ISecretStore); Akka
replicator ZB.MOM.WW.Secrets.Akka is a deferred phase-2. Design doc +
executable plan + .tasks.json under docs/plans/2026-07-17-secrets-g7-*.
Tracking: components/secrets/GAPS.md + CLAUDE.md secrets row updated.
Live HistorianGateway boot caught that the expander scanned a '_secretsComment' appsettings
value documenting the ${secret:...} syntax, tried to resolve the literal example token, and
crashed boot. The family uses _*Comment keys pervasively, so skip any config key whose leaf
segment starts with '_' (the _comment convention). Functional keys never lead with '_'.
Joseph Doherty