To trace software back to the source and define the moving parts in a complex supply chain, provenance needs to be there from the very beginning. It’s the verifiable information about software artifacts describing where, when and how something was produced. For higher SLSA levels and more resilient integrity guarantees, provenance requirements are stricter and need a deeper, more technical understanding of the predicate.

This document defines the following predicate type within the in-toto attestation framework:

"predicateType": "https://slsa.dev/provenance/v0.1"

Important: Always use the above string for predicateType rather than what is in the URL bar. The predicateType URI will always resolve to the latest minor version of this specification. See parsing rules for more information.

Purpose

Describe how an artifact or set of artifacts was produced.

This predicate is the recommended way to satisfy the SLSA provenance requirements.

Model

Provenance is a claim that some entity (builder) produced one or more software artifacts (Statement’s subject) by executing some recipe, using some other artifacts as input (materials). The builder is trusted to have faithfully recorded the provenance; there is no option but to trust the builder. However, the builder may have performed this operation at the request of some external, possibly untrusted entity. These untrusted parameters are captured in the recipe’s entryPoint, arguments, and some of the materials. Finally, the build may have depended on various environmental parameters (environment) that are needed for reproducing the build but that are not under external control.

See Example for a concrete example.

Model Diagram

Schema

{
  // Standard attestation fields:
  "_type": "https://in-toto.io/Statement/v0.1",
  "subject": [{ ... }],

  // Predicate:
  "predicateType": "https://slsa.dev/provenance/v0.1",
  "predicate": {
    "builder": {
      "id": "<URI>"
    },
    "recipe": {
      "type": "<URI>",
      "definedInMaterial": /* integer */,
      "entryPoint": "<STRING>",
      "arguments": { /* object */ },
      "environment": { /* object */ }
    },
    "metadata": {
      "buildInvocationId": "<STRING>",
      "buildStartedOn": "<TIMESTAMP>",
      "buildFinishedOn": "<TIMESTAMP>",
      "completeness": {
        "arguments": true/false,
        "environment": true/false,
        "materials": true/false
      },
      "reproducible": true/false
    },
    "materials": [
      {
        "uri": "<URI>",
        "digest": { /* DigestSet */ }
      }
    ]
  }
}

Parsing rules

This predicate follows the in-toto attestation parsing rules. Summary:

  • Consumers MUST ignore unrecognized fields.
  • The predicateType URI includes the major version number and will always change whenever there is a backwards incompatible change.
  • Minor version changes are always backwards compatible and “monotonic.” Such changes do not update the predicateType.
  • Producers MAY add extension fields using field names that are URIs.

Fields

NOTE: This section describes the fields within predicate. For a description of the other top-level fields, such as subject, see Statement.

builder object, required

Identifies the entity that executed the recipe, which is trusted to have correctly performed the operation and populated this provenance.

The identity MUST reflect the trust base that consumers care about. How detailed to be is a judgement call. For example, GitHub Actions supports both GitHub-hosted runners and self-hosted runners. The GitHub-hosted runner might be a single identity because, it’s all GitHub from the consumer’s perspective. Meanwhile, each self-hosted runner might have its own identity because not all runners are trusted by all consumers.

Consumers MUST accept only specific (signer, builder) pairs. For example, the “GitHub” can sign provenance for the “GitHub Actions” builder, and “Google” can sign provenance for the “Google Cloud Build” builder, but “GitHub” cannot sign for the “Google Cloud Build” builder.

Design rationale: The builder is distinct from the signer because one signer may generate attestations for more than one builder, as in the GitHub Actions example above. The field is required, even if it is implicit from the signer, to aid readability and debugging. It is an object to allow additional fields in the future, in case one URI is not sufficient.

builder.id string (TypeURI), required

URI indicating the builder’s identity.

recipe object, optional

Identifies the configuration used for the build. When combined with materials, this SHOULD fully describe the build, such that re-running this recipe results in bit-for-bit identical output (if the build is reproducible).

MAY be unset/null if unknown, but this is DISCOURAGED.

recipe.type string (TypeURI), required

URI indicating what type of recipe was performed. It determines the meaning of recipe.entryPoint, recipe.arguments, recipe.environment, and materials.

recipe.definedInMaterial integer, optional

Index in materials containing the recipe steps that are not implied by recipe.type. For example, if the recipe type were “make”, then this would point to the source containing the Makefile, not the make program itself.

Omit this field (or use null) if the recipe doesn’t come from a material.

TODO: What if there is more than one material?

recipe.entryPoint string, optional

String identifying the entry point into the build. This is often a path to a configuration file and/or a target label within that file. The syntax and meaning are defined by recipe.type. For example, if the recipe type were “make”, then this would reference the directory in which to run make as well as which target to use.

Consumers SHOULD accept only specific recipe.entryPoint values. For example, a policy might only allow the “release” entry point but not the “debug” entry point.

MAY be omitted if the recipe type specifies a default value.

Design rationale: The entryPoint is distinct from arguments to make it easier to write secure policies without having to parse arguments.

recipe.arguments object, optional

Collection of all external inputs that influenced the build on top of recipe.definedInMaterial and recipe.entryPoint. For example, if the recipe type were “make”, then this might be the flags passed to make aside from the target, which is captured in recipe.entryPoint.

Consumers SHOULD accept only “safe” recipe.arguments. The simplest and safest way to achieve this is to disallow any arguments altogether.

This is an arbitrary JSON object with a schema is defined by recipe.type.

This is considered to be incomplete unless metadata.completeness.arguments is true. Unset or null is equivalent to empty.

recipe.environment object, optional

Any other builder-controlled inputs necessary for correctly evaluating the recipe. Usually only needed for reproducing the build but not evaluated as part of policy.

This SHOULD be minimized to only include things that are part of the public API, that cannot be recomputed from other values in the provenance, and that actually affect the evaluation of the recipe. For example, this might include variables that are referenced in the workflow definition, but it SHOULD NOT include a dump of all environment variables or include things like the hostname (assuming hostname is not part of the public API).

This is an arbitrary JSON object with a schema is defined by recipe.type.

This is considered to be incomplete unless metadata.completeness.environment is true. Unset or null is equivalent to empty.

metadata object, optional

Other properties of the build.

metadata.buildInvocationId string, optional

Identifies this particular build invocation, which can be useful for finding associated logs or other ad-hoc analysis. The exact meaning and format is defined by builder.id; by default it is treated as opaque and case-sensitive. The value SHOULD be globally unique.

metadata.buildStartedOn string (Timestamp), optional

The timestamp of when the build started.

metadata.buildFinishedOn string (Timestamp), optional

The timestamp of when the build completed.

metadata.completeness object, optional

Indicates that the builder claims certain fields in this message to be complete.

metadata.completeness.arguments boolean, optional

If true, the builder claims that recipe.arguments is complete, meaning that all external inputs are properly captured in recipe.

metadata.completeness.environment boolean, optional

If true, the builder claims that recipe.environment is claimed to be complete.

metadata.completeness.materials boolean, optional

If true, the builder claims that materials is complete, usually through some controls to prevent network access. Sometimes called “hermetic”.

metadata.reproducible boolean, optional

If true, the builder claims that running recipe on materials will produce bit-for-bit identical output.

materials array of objects, optional

The collection of artifacts that influenced the build including sources, dependencies, build tools, base images, and so on.

This is considered to be incomplete unless metadata.completeness.materials is true. Unset or null is equivalent to empty.

materials[*].uri string (ResourceURI), optional

The method by which this artifact was referenced during the build.

TODO: Should we differentiate between the “referenced” URI and the “resolved” URI, e.g. “latest” vs “3.4.1”?

TODO: Should wrap in a locator object to allow for extensibility, in case we add other types of URIs or other non-URI locators?

materials[*].digest object (DigestSet), optional

Collection of cryptographic digests for the contents of this artifact.

Example

WARNING: This is just for demonstration purposes.

Suppose the builder downloaded example-1.2.3.tar.gz, extracted it, and ran make -C src foo CFLAGS=-O3, resulting in a file with hash 5678.... Then the provenance might look like this:

{
  "_type": "https://in-toto.io/Statement/v0.1",
  // Output file; name is "_" to indicate "not important".
  "subject": [{"name": "_", "digest": {"sha256": "5678..."}}],
  "predicateType": "https://slsa.dev/provenance/v0.1",
  "predicate": {
    "builder": { "id": "mailto:person@example.com" },
    "recipe": {
      "type": "https://example.com/Makefile",
      "definedInMaterial": 0,                 // material containing the Makefile
      "entryPoint": "src:foo",                // target "foo" in directory "src"
      "arguments": {"CFLAGS": "-O3"}          // extra args to `make`
    },
    "materials": [{
      "uri": "https://example.com/example-1.2.3.tar.gz",
      "digest": {"sha256": "1234..."}
    }]
  }
}

More examples

GitHub Actions

WARNING: This is only for demonstration purposes. The GitHub Actions team has not yet reviewed or approved this design, and it is not yet implemented. Details are subject to change!

If GitHub is the one to generate provenance, and the runner is GitHub-hosted, then the builder would be as follows:

"builder": {
  "id": "https://github.com/Attestations/GitHubHostedActions@v1"
}

Self-hosted runner: Not yet supported. We need to figure out a URI scheme that represents what system hosted the runner, or perhaps add additional properties in builder.

GitHub Actions Workflow

"recipe": {
  // Build steps were defined in a GitHub Actions Workflow file ...
  "type": "https://github.com/Attestations/GitHubActionsWorkflow@v1",
  // ... in the git repo described by `materials[0]` ...
  "definedInMaterial": 0,
  // ... at the path .github/workflows/build.yaml, using the job "build".
  "entryPoint": "build.yaml:build",
  // The only possible user-defined parameters that can affect the build are the
  // "inputs" to a workflow_dispatch event. This is unset/null for all other
  // events.
  "arguments": {
    "inputs": { ... }
  },
  // Other variables that are required to reproduce the build and that cannot be
  // recomputed using existing information. (Documentation would explain how to
  // recompute the rest of the fields.)
  "environment": {
    // The architecture of the runner.
    "arch": "amd64",
    // Environment variables. These are always set because it is not possible
    // to know whether they were referenced or not.
    "env": {
      "GITHUB_RUN_ID": "1234",
      "GITHUB_RUN_NUMBER": "5678",
      "GITHUB_EVENT_NAME": "push"
    },
    // The context values that were referenced in the workflow definition.
    // Secrets are set to the empty string.
    "context": {
      "github": {
        "run_id": "abcd1234"
      },
      "runner": {
        "os": "Linux",
        "temp": "/tmp/tmp.iizj8l0XhS",
      }
    }
  }
}
"materials": [{
  // The git repo that contains the build.yaml referenced above.
  "uri": "git+https://github.com/foo/bar.git",
  // The resolved git commit hash reflecting the version of the repo used
  // for this build.
  "digest": {"sha1": "abc..."}
}]

Google Cloud Build

WARNING: This is only for demonstration purposes. The Google Cloud Build team has not yet reviewed or approved this design, and it is not yet implemented. Details are subject to change!

If Google is the one to generate provenance, and the worker is Google-hosted, then the builder would be as follows:

"builder": {
  "id": "https://cloudbuild.googleapis.com/GoogleHostedWorker@v1"
}

Custom worker: Not yet supported. We need to figure out a URI scheme that represents what system hosted the worker, or perhaps add additional properties in builder.

Cloud Build config-as-code

Here entryPoint references the filename from the CloudBuild BuildTrigger.

"recipe": {
  // Build steps were defined in a cloudbuild.yaml file ...
  "type": "https://cloudbuild.googleapis.com/CloudBuildYaml@v1",
  // ... in the git repo described by `materials[0]` ...
  "definedInMaterial": 0,
  // ... at the path path/to/cloudbuild.yaml.
  "entryPoint": "path/to/cloudbuild.yaml",
  // The only possible user-defined parameters that can affect a BuildTrigger
  // are the substitutions in the BuildTrigger.
  "arguments": {
    "substitutions": {...}
  }
}
"materials": [{
  // The git repo that contains the cloudbuild.yaml referenced above.
  "uri": "git+https://source.developers.google.com/p/foo/r/bar",
  // The resolved git commit hash reflecting the version of the repo used
  // for this build.
  "digest": {"sha1": "abc..."}
}]

Cloud Build RPC

Here we list the steps defined in a trigger or over RPC:

"recipe": {
  // Build steps were provided as an argument. No `definedInMaterial` or
  // `entryPoint`.
  "type": "https://cloudbuild.googleapis.com/CloudBuildSteps@v1",
  "arguments": {
    // The steps that were performed. (Format TBD.)
    "steps": [...],
    // The substitutions in the build trigger.
    "substitutions": {...}
    // TODO: Any other arguments?
  }
}

Explicitly run commands

WARNING: This is just a proof-of-concept. It is not yet standardized.

Execution of arbitrary commands:

"recipe": {
  // There was no entry point, and the commands were run in an ad-hoc fashion.
  // There is no `definedInMaterial` or `entryPoint`.
  "type": "https://example.com/ManuallyRunCommands@v1",
  "arguments": {
    // The list of commands that were executed.
    "commands": [
      "tar xvf foo-1.2.3.tar.gz",
      "cd foo-1.2.3",
      "./configure --enable-some-feature",
      "make foo.zip"
    ],
    // Indicates how to parse the strings in `commands`.
    "shell": "bash"
  }
}

Change history

  • Renamed to “slsa.dev/provenance”.
  • 0.1.1: Added metadata.buildInvocationId.
  • 0.1: Initial version, named “in-toto.io/Provenance”
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