ExecSurface v0.1.0-alpha.6

ExecSurface v0.1.0-alpha.6

Sixth public alpha of ExecSurface.

Alpha.6 supersedes Alpha.5 as the recommended public Alpha for the documented Linux x86_64 + native ptrace product boundary. Alpha.5 remains immutable and available for rollback, reproduction, and historical review.

What changed

Alpha.6 incorporates the Stage-2 semantic-remediation program and the post-R8 merge-authorization destruction round.

Runtime evidence correctness

• Corrected stale FD destination identity after successful dup2/dup3-style replacement from an untracked source.
• Unknown FD I/O no longer disappears while evidence remains marked complete; unresolved attribution fails closed.
• Side-effectful open handling now distinguishes lexical intent from kernel-resolved object evidence within the qualified boundary.
• Multiply-linked filesystem objects are treated conservatively where path-only attribution cannot prove unique object identity.

Baseline and policy custody

• A verified baseline can be bound to an externally supplied expected semantic digest.
• Policy bytes can be bound to an externally supplied SHA-256 identity.
• Required-custody Action mode rejects missing, partial, malformed, duplicated, or unauthorized trust pins before target execution.

Policy schema v3

Alpha.6 adds opt-in policy schema v3 matchers for:

• open intent;
• path-resolution authority;
• rename source.

Policy v1/v2 meanings are retained. v3-only fields under older schemas are rejected rather than ignored.

Verdict-output materialization

The post-R8 destruction round found and retained multiple fail-first counterexamples around report output ownership and pathname rebinding.

The corrected materialization guard covers, within the qualified boundary:

• direct workload writes;
• rename and chained-rename lineage;
• parent-directory rename lineage;
• create/truncate/ftruncate/delete final-state changes;
• hardlink alias transitions;
• preexisting and workload-created symlink outputs;
• multiply-linked and non-regular output objects;
• output-parent directory replacement;
• output-parent symlink rebinding.

The final merge-authorization destruction corpus passed 17/17 cases on the qualified product source.

Compatibility boundary

Alpha.6 uses corrected normalization profile 4.

Alpha.5 baselines use profile 3 and are not silently migrated or reinterpreted. A profile-3 Alpha.5 baseline is explicitly incomparable with an Alpha.6 profile-4 candidate.

Migration: relearn the baseline with Alpha.6 under the same intended command/wrapper before using Alpha.6 check.

Alpha.5 remains available for exact historical reproduction and rollback.

Verdict contract

The existing verdict meanings remain:

• PASS = 0
• ERROR = 2
• REVIEW = 10
• BLOCK = 20

The wrapped target's native exit status remains report metadata rather than an automatic verdict input; this meaning is unchanged from Alpha.5.

Qualified public boundary

• Linux x86_64
• native ptrace reference observer
• Alpha.6 is still a prerelease
• experimental libbpf/eBPF paths are not promoted into the public PASS/learn/check authority boundary

ExecSurface is a runtime behavioral-verification / execution-semantics / semantic-evidence correctness system. This release does not classify the project as cybersecurity research and does not claim that PASS proves software safety.

Preserved history

This release does not delete or rewrite:

• v0.1.0-alpha.5;
• Alpha.5 release artifacts;
• historical issues, PRs, comments, reviews, or external-engagement records;
• retained RED/fail-first evidence from Stage-2.

The moving v0.1 Action channel is promoted to Alpha.6 only after the immutable Alpha.6 release and consumer gates pass.

Source commit: 6d49b76841cc5fbe752d992aa15017219b55b725

Build workflow: https://github.com/AETHERXGLOBAL/execsurface/actions/runs/37727017593