adr-sml/docs/reference/intake-table-access-verification.md

# Who can read `adr-intake-submissions` — verification extract

**Why this file exists.** `/legal/privacy/` makes a statement to the public about
who can see the contents of the intake table. `AGENTS.md` §4 admits no factual
claim that cannot be traced, and `CLAUDE.md`'s R14 rule is that anything a spec
claims about must be reachable from the repository — *"if the artefact lives only
in a console, no reviewer can compare the claim against it and the claim is
unverifiable by construction."* Until this file existed, that sentence was the
one claim on the site whose subject was entirely outside the repo.

Raised by `claims-auditor` in the D20 cutover audit, 2026-09-01, finding 8.

**Provenance.** Figures in the ORIGINAL sections were read from AWS on
**2026-09-01**; everything in the **2026-09-02 addendum** at the foot of this file
was read on 2026-09-02, and it supersedes the original role screen. Both were run
read-only as `arn:aws:iam::327082975128:user/pouya` with the commands listed at
the end.
No command in this file creates or changes anything. Re-run them rather than
trusting this file; it is dated for that reason.

---

## ✅ RULED AND APPLIED — 2026-09-02

**Pouya ruled `state the truth`, not `remove the access`** (§9 Q62, ruled
2026-09-01, applied 2026-09-02). Option 2 below is the one taken; option 1 was
declined. `lars`'s membership of `admins` is **unchanged**.

**The shipped sentences**, so this file can be compared against the live page
rather than against a struck one:

> Two people can. The table sits in an Amazon Web Services account that also
> runs systems unrelated to this practice, and that account has two
> administrators — me, and one other person who administers it with me.
> Administrative access to the account carries the ability to read the table, so
> both of us can read what you send.

> No one outside those two people has been granted access to the table, and that
> is measured rather than assumed: every user and every role in the account was
> simulated against this table, and the only ones that come back able to read it
> lead to those same two people.

> The function that receives the form **can only add a record — it cannot read
> the table back.** And the credential that publishes this website has **no
> access to the table at all**, for reading or for writing.

**Wording is subject to Pouya's read-through approval** — §9 **Q63**, with a
`TODO(pouya)` beside the copy. The measurement is settled; the phrasing is not.

⚠️ **AND THE ENUMERATION BELOW WAS NOT ENOUGH TO SUPPORT THE SECOND OF THOSE
SENTENCES. See the addendum at the foot of this file**, which is what the page
actually rests on. Read it before citing the five-row table.

---

## The claim being checked — ⚠️ STRUCK 2026-09-01, QUOTED HERE AS THE DEFECT

This is **no longer on the page.** It is kept because it is the string
`check-claims.mjs`'s `sole-administrator-q62` pattern permanently bars, and a
tripwire whose target is not recorded anywhere becomes unmaintainable.

`src/pages/legal/privacy.astro`, §Who can see it, **as it stood at `bd282aa`**:

> The table is reachable by the function that writes to it and by one
> administrative account, which is mine — nobody else has access to the table.
> There is no team, no assistant and no external administrator.

## The finding: it is false

The account has an IAM group **`admins`** carrying the AWS managed policy
**`AdministratorAccess`**, and it has **two members: `pouya` and `lars`.**

`iam simulate-principal-policy` for `dynamodb:GetItem`, `dynamodb:Query` and
`dynamodb:Scan` against
`arn:aws:dynamodb:ca-central-1:327082975128:table/adr-intake-submissions`, across
all five IAM users in the account:

| principal | GetItem | Query | Scan |
|---|---|---|---|
| `user/pouya` | **allowed** | **allowed** | **allowed** |
| `user/lars` | **allowed** | **allowed** | **allowed** |
| `user/adr-sml-deploy` | implicitDeny | implicitDeny | implicitDeny |
| `user/gitea-deploy-meshkinilaw` | implicitDeny | implicitDeny | implicitDeny |
| `user/meshkini-backend-deploy` | implicitDeny | implicitDeny | implicitDeny |

`lars` holds exactly the access `pouya` holds, by the same route: membership of
`admins`. The user's own attachments are only `IAMUserChangePassword`, so the
group is the whole of it.

So the published sentence is wrong on both of its halves — a second account has
access, and it belongs to a second administrator of a shared account.

## The rest of the surface, recorded so the check is complete rather than partial

- **5 IAM users**: `adr-sml-deploy`, `gitea-deploy-meshkinilaw`, `lars`,
  `meshkini-backend-deploy`, `pouya`. The three deploy users are all
  `implicitDeny` above. `adr-sml-deploy`'s scope is S3 + CloudFront and touches
  no table (`docs/reference/deploy-credential-verification.md`).
- **1 IAM group**: `admins` — `AdministratorAccess` and `Billing`, two members.
- **33 IAM roles**, 26 of them not service-linked. Two carry
  `AdministratorAccess`:
  `cdk-hnb659fds-cfn-exec-role-327082975128-ca-central-1` and
  `…-us-east-1`. These are **AWS CDK bootstrap CloudFormation execution roles**,
  assumable by CloudFormation for stack deployment. They are a real path to the
  table for anyone who can deploy a CDK stack in this account — which is the two
  administrators above — rather than a third party.
- **`adr-intake-lambda-role`** is the writing principal: `dynamodb:PutItem` on
  this table, `ses:SendEmail`/`SendRawEmail`, plus
  `AWSLambdaBasicExecutionRole`. **`PutItem` only — it cannot read the table**,
  which is worth stating because it is a stronger fact than the page currently
  claims and it is the part of the sentence that is true.
- **No resource-based policy on the table.** DynamoDB supports one; this table
  has none, so access is governed entirely by identity policies.
- The account is **not single-project** (`AGENTS.md` §10). `lars` and the two
  `meshkini*`/`gitea*` users are evidence of that on the IAM surface, not just
  in the S3 bucket listing §10 describes.

## What had to happen before `/legal/privacy/` went public — ✅ RESOLVED BY OPTION 2

Tracked as `AGENTS.md` §9 **Q62**, **closed 2026-09-02 on option 2.** Kept
unstruck because the reasoning is what makes the ruling re-readable, and because
option 1 remains live in one direction: if that access is ever actually removed,
the page and the tripwire both have to change, and `check-claims.mjs`'s `rule:`
line carries that instruction.

1. **Remove the access** — take `lars` out of `admins`, or replace that
   membership with a policy that denies DynamoDB on this table — and then this
   sentence becomes true. Note the likely collision: `AGENTS.md` Q23 records the
   Gitea instance as *jointly administered* and blocked on *"its second
   administrator"*, so this account is probably not the only thing that access
   is for.
2. **Correct the sentence** to what is true. It is a privacy policy, so the
   honest version is short and specific — the number of people with
   administrative access, and that the function that writes cannot read.

**Do not resolve it by softening.** "Access is limited to authorised
administrators" is the shape §4 exists to bar: defensible, uninformative, and it
would replace a false specific with a true vacancy on the one page where a reader
is entitled to the specific.

---

## Commands

Run as `user/pouya`, `ca-central-1`, all read-only. Exit status read on each; no
stderr suppressed anywhere.

```bash
aws iam list-users --query 'Users[].UserName'
aws iam list-groups --query 'Groups[].GroupName'
aws iam get-group --group-name admins --query 'Users[].UserName'
aws iam list-attached-group-policies --group-name admins --query 'AttachedPolicies[].PolicyName'
aws iam list-group-policies --group-name admins --query 'PolicyNames'
aws iam list-groups-for-user --user-name lars --query 'Groups[].GroupName'
aws iam list-attached-user-policies --user-name lars --query 'AttachedPolicies[].PolicyName'
aws iam list-user-policies --user-name lars --query 'PolicyNames'

TARN="arn:aws:dynamodb:ca-central-1:327082975128:table/adr-intake-submissions"
for U in pouya lars adr-sml-deploy gitea-deploy-meshkinilaw meshkini-backend-deploy; do
  aws iam simulate-principal-policy \
    --policy-source-arn "arn:aws:iam::327082975128:user/${U}" \
    --action-names dynamodb:GetItem dynamodb:Query dynamodb:Scan \
    --resource-arns "$TARN" \
    --query 'EvaluationResults[].{A:EvalActionName,D:EvalDecision}' --output text
done

# Roles: 33 total, 26 non-service-linked; screened for broad policies.
for R in $(aws iam list-roles --query 'Roles[].RoleName' --output text \
             | tr '\t' '\n' | grep -v '^AWSServiceRole'); do
  aws iam list-attached-role-policies --role-name "$R" \
    --query 'AttachedPolicies[].PolicyName' --output text
done

aws iam get-role-policy --role-name adr-intake-lambda-role \
  --policy-name adr-intake-lambda-inline --query PolicyDocument
aws iam list-attached-role-policies --role-name adr-intake-lambda-role
```

⚠️ **`simulate-principal-policy` was the tool that produced a false negative on
this project once already** — `AGENTS.md` Q22, where eight checks returned empty
because `2>/dev/null` was hiding an `InvalidInput` error caused by a zsh
parameter-expansion bug (`$ACCT:user/` parses `:u` as a history modifier). The
loop above brace-quotes `${U}` for that reason, prints one line per principal so
a silently-skipped iteration is visible as a missing row, and suppresses nothing.
**Five rows, or the run did not happen.**

---

## ⚠️ ADDENDUM 2026-09-02 — THE ENUMERATION ABOVE WAS INCOMPLETE IN THREE WAYS, AND ITS CONCLUSION SURVIVES ANYWAY

**Why this addendum exists.** `/legal/privacy/` publishes a completeness claim
about who can read this table — the second of the three sentences quoted at the
top of this file, under **The shipped sentences**. Written as it stood, this file
did not support it.

*(This paragraph quoted a different sentence until 2026-09-02 — round 1's
**pre-fix** wording, *"every account and role in this infrastructure…"*, which
the audit then struck. So this file briefly quoted two different sentences as the
live one, in the two halves of the same document, which defeats the comparison
R14 exists for. Fixed by pointing at the block above rather than re-quoting it:
one copy of a fact, in one place. `adversarial-reviewer`, round 2.)* Under R14 the artefact is what a reviewer compares the
claim against, so a claim stronger than its artefact is unverifiable by
construction even when it happens to be true.

**What was missing.**

1. **`aws iam list-role-policies` was never run.** The command block above lists
   only `list-attached-role-policies`, which returns *managed* policies. **23 of
   the 26 non-service-linked roles carry inline policies**, and none of them had
   been read. The screen for "broad policies" could not have seen an inline grant.
2. **No role was ever simulated against the table.** Access was inferred from
   policy *names* (`AdministratorAccess`) rather than measured as a decision.
3. **The five users were simulated for reads only** — `GetItem`, `Query`, `Scan`.
   So the page's *"the credential that publishes this website has no access to the
   table at all"* covered three read actions and said "at all".

**What the measurement found, and it changes the role count.** Simulating all 26
non-service-linked roles across **seven** actions — `GetItem`, `Query`, `Scan`,
`BatchGetItem`, `PutItem`, `UpdateItem`, `DeleteItem`:

| role | decision on the table | trust |
|---|---|---|
| `cdk-hnb659fds-cfn-exec-role-…-ca-central-1` | **allowed on all 7** | `cloudformation.amazonaws.com` only |
| `cdk-hnb659fds-cfn-exec-role-…-us-east-1` | **allowed on all 7** | `cloudformation.amazonaws.com` only |
| `cdk-hnb659fds-lookup-role-…-ca-central-1` | **allowed on the 4 READS**, denied on writes | `arn:aws:iam::327082975128:root` |
| `cdk-hnb659fds-lookup-role-…-us-east-1` | **allowed on the 4 READS**, denied on writes | `arn:aws:iam::327082975128:root` |
| `adr-intake-lambda-role` | `PutItem` **only**; implicitDeny on the other six | `lambda.amazonaws.com` |
| the other 21 | implicitDeny on all 7 | — |

**So FOUR roles can read the table, not the two this file recorded.** The two
`lookup` roles were missed by exactly the gap above: their grant is the inline
`LookupRolePolicy`, and `list-attached-role-policies` returns nothing for them.

**Why the published sentence is nevertheless correct.** The question is not how
many roles exist but which *people* they lead back to.

- The two **cfn-exec** roles trust `cloudformation.amazonaws.com` and nothing
  else. No human can assume them; they are reachable only by deploying a
  CloudFormation/CDK stack, which requires a principal who can deploy one.
- The two **lookup** roles trust the account root, which delegates the decision
  to the caller's own identity policy. Simulated for `sts:AssumeRole` against
  both role ARNs, for all five users, reading `ResourceSpecificResults` (ten
  per-resource decisions, not five — `EvaluationResults` is one entry per
  **action**, and an earlier pass here asserted the wrong count):

| principal | assume `lookup-…-ca-central-1` | assume `lookup-…-us-east-1` |
|---|---|---|
| `user/pouya` | **allowed** | **allowed** |
| `user/lars` | **allowed** | **allowed** |
| `user/adr-sml-deploy` | implicitDeny | implicitDeny |
| `user/gitea-deploy-meshkinilaw` | implicitDeny | implicitDeny |
| `user/meshkini-backend-deploy` | implicitDeny | implicitDeny |

- The **CloudFormation escalation path this file named and left untested** —
  *"a real path to the table for anyone who can deploy a CDK stack"* — is now
  measured. Simulated for `cloudformation:CreateStack`, `UpdateStack`,
  `CreateChangeSet`, `ExecuteChangeSet`, `iam:PassRole` and `sts:AssumeRole`,
  five users × six actions = **30 decisions**, count asserted:

| principal | the CDK / CloudFormation path |
|---|---|
| `user/pouya` | **allowed** on all six |
| `user/lars` | **allowed** on all six |
| `user/adr-sml-deploy` | implicitDeny on all six |
| `user/gitea-deploy-meshkinilaw` | implicitDeny on all six |
| `user/meshkini-backend-deploy` | implicitDeny on all six |

  This is the finding that mattered most, because `meshkini-backend-deploy` is by
  its name another project's backend-deploy credential and
  `gitea-deploy-meshkinilaw` is held on a **jointly administered** Gitea instance
  (Q23). Either one, had it been able to drive CloudFormation, would have read
  the table without appearing in the five-row table above — and *"Two people
  can"* would have been wrong. Neither can.

- **And the seven roles every sweep here had excluded BY CONSTRUCTION are now
  measured too.** Every role loop in this file filters `grep -v
  '^AWSServiceRole'`, and the assertion was written as *"twenty-six role rows"* —
  so a service-linked role was outside the claim rather than inside it, which
  matters because a service-linked role for a backup or migration service can
  read table contents. All **7** (`APIGateway`, `CloudFrontLogger`,
  `InternetMonitor`, `RDS`, `ResourceExplorer`, `Support`, `TrustedAdvisor`) are
  **implicitDeny on all seven actions** — 49 decisions, count asserted
  `[verified 2026-09-02]`. **So the enumeration is 33 of 33 roles, not 26 of
  33**, and the page's *"every user and every role in the account"* is now
  literally true. Raised by `adversarial-reviewer`, round 2.

- **There is no federated identity surface at all**: `list-saml-providers` **0**,
  `list-open-id-connect-providers` **0**, `sso-admin list-instances` **0**
  `[verified 2026-09-02]`. So "every user and every role" is not leaving out a
  federated principal, because there is none to leave out.

Every read path therefore terminates at `pouya` or `lars`. **The count of people
is two, and it is now the result of an enumeration rather than of a policy name.**

**The account root user, recorded because an enumeration that quietly omits it is
not an enumeration.** Root is not an IAM user and does not appear in
`list-users`, so it cannot be simulated and no policy constrains it — root can
always read the table. Two facts bound it: `get-account-summary` reports
`AccountAccessKeysPresent: 0`, so **there is no programmatic root credential**,
and `AccountMFAEnabled: 1`. Root access therefore requires the root password and
its MFA device. **The page does not mention root and should not**: an account
owner's own credential is inherent to every cloud account and is not a third
party who has been granted access — which is why the shipped sentence is scoped
to *"every user and every role"* and to who has been *granted* access, rather
than to a bare "nobody else can". Who holds the root credentials is not
established in this repository; it is not a page-blocking fact, and it is noted
here rather than guessed at.

**Two page sentences are now supported that were not before.**

- *"The function that receives the form can only add a record and cannot read the
  table back"* — `adr-intake-lambda-role` returns `allowed` for `PutItem` and
  `implicitDeny` for `GetItem`, `Query`, `Scan`, `BatchGetItem`, `UpdateItem` and
  `DeleteItem`. Previously this rested on reading the policy document; it is now
  the simulator's decision.
- *"the credential that publishes this website has no access to the table at
  all"* — `adr-sml-deploy` is `implicitDeny` on all **seven**, so "at all" now
  covers writes and deletes as well as reads.

**And it corroborates §10 from the IAM surface.** Of the 26 non-service-linked
roles, **9 belong to CDK bootstrap** and **14 to four unrelated production
systems** in the same account — which is what `/legal/privacy/` now tells a
reader in as many words. *(Their role names were listed here until 2026-09-02 and
are not any more: this is a committed file, they are another project's IAM
surface, and the count carries the whole of the argument. `adversarial-reviewer`,
round 2.)*

⚠️ **THE INSTRUMENT FAILED FIRST, UNIFORMLY, AND IN THE DIRECTION THAT READS AS
CLEAN.** The role sweep was first run as `--action-names $ACTS` with the seven
actions in a shell variable. **zsh does not word-split parameter expansions**, so
`simulate-principal-policy` received **one** action name — the whole string — and
answered it: `implicitDeny` for 22 roles, and `allowed` for the four with a `*`
grant, because `*` matches a bogus action too. Twenty-two clean rows and a
plausible four. The tell was the shape of the output, not the verdict: one
decision per role where there should have been seven. **The fix is the assertion,
not the memory** — the loop now counts `EvaluationResults` per call and refuses a
row that does not carry exactly seven, and the users' assume check counts
`ResourceSpecificResults` and refuses a row that does not carry exactly two.
`CLAUDE.md` records this class five times over; this is the sixth, and it is the
"uniformly good" half.

### Commands — the ones this addendum rests on

Read-only, run as `user/pouya` in `ca-central-1`. No stderr suppressed, exit
status read on every call, and note the **literal** action lists: they are not in
a variable, which is the whole point above.

```bash
# 1. Inline policies — the command the original block never ran.
aws iam list-roles --query 'Roles[].RoleName' --output text \
  | tr '\t' '\n' | grep -v '^AWSServiceRole' \
  | while IFS= read -r R; do
      aws iam list-role-policies --role-name "$R" --query 'PolicyNames' --output text
    done

# 2. Every non-service-linked role, seven actions, decision asserted per row.
#    The count check is what makes a broken call loud instead of clean.
aws iam simulate-principal-policy \
  --policy-source-arn "arn:aws:iam::327082975128:role/<ROLE>" \
  --action-names dynamodb:GetItem dynamodb:Query dynamodb:Scan \
                 dynamodb:BatchGetItem dynamodb:PutItem dynamodb:UpdateItem \
                 dynamodb:DeleteItem \
  --resource-arns "arn:aws:dynamodb:ca-central-1:327082975128:table/adr-intake-submissions" \
  --query 'length(EvaluationResults)' --output text    # must print 7

# 3. Trust policies of the four roles that can read.
aws iam get-role --role-name <ROLE> --query 'Role.AssumeRolePolicyDocument'

# 4. Who can assume the two lookup roles — per RESOURCE, not per action.
aws iam simulate-principal-policy \
  --policy-source-arn "arn:aws:iam::327082975128:user/<USER>" \
  --action-names sts:AssumeRole \
  --resource-arns "arn:aws:iam::327082975128:role/cdk-hnb659fds-lookup-role-327082975128-ca-central-1" \
                  "arn:aws:iam::327082975128:role/cdk-hnb659fds-lookup-role-327082975128-us-east-1" \
  --query 'EvaluationResults[].ResourceSpecificResults[].{R:EvalResourceName,D:EvalResourceDecision}' \
  --output text                                        # must print 2 rows
```

```bash
# 5. The CloudFormation / CDK escalation path, per user. Six actions, literal.
aws iam simulate-principal-policy \
  --policy-source-arn "arn:aws:iam::327082975128:user/<USER>" \
  --action-names cloudformation:CreateStack cloudformation:UpdateStack \
                 cloudformation:CreateChangeSet cloudformation:ExecuteChangeSet \
                 iam:PassRole sts:AssumeRole \
  --query 'EvaluationResults[].{A:EvalActionName,D:EvalDecision}' --output text

# 6. Federated identity surfaces, and root.
aws iam list-saml-providers            --query 'length(SAMLProviderList)'
aws iam list-open-id-connect-providers --query 'length(OpenIDConnectProviderList)'
aws sso-admin list-instances           --query 'length(Instances)'
aws iam get-account-summary \
  --query 'SummaryMap.{AccessKeysPresentRoot:AccountAccessKeysPresent,MFA:AccountMFAEnabled}'
```

**Five user rows and twenty-six role rows, or the run did not happen.** And for
every simulation: **seven decisions per role call, six per CDK-path call, two
per-resource decisions per assume call** — the counts are the assertion, because
a call that silently received one bogus action name answers `implicitDeny` and
reads exactly like a clean row.