bcquality/microsoft/knowledge/security/compose-secrets-with-secretstrsubstno.md
Jesper Schulz-Wedde 0980397d27 Seed security knowledge corpus (16 articles + 30 AL samples)
Converts Jesper's existing AL security-review prompt into BCQuality seed
knowledge articles so the al-security-review leaf has a real corpus to
match against. Mirrors the performance seed phase.

Articles under microsoft/knowledge/security/ (16):
- Permission model: follow-least-privilege-in-permission-sets,
  use-indirect-permissions-for-elevated-access,
  use-inherent-permissions-to-grant-minimal-access
- Secrets: never-hardcode-secrets-in-al,
  use-isolated-storage-for-module-and-company-secrets,
  prefer-azure-key-vault-for-production-secrets,
  use-secrettext-for-credentials, use-secrettext-with-httpclient,
  compose-secrets-with-secretstrsubstno,
  use-nondebuggable-when-parsing-secrets
- External calls: require-https-for-external-calls,
  set-timeouts-for-external-calls, do-not-put-credentials-in-urls
- Error handling: avoid-sensitive-data-in-error-messages,
  do-not-swallow-security-errors-silently
- Extensibility: do-not-expose-sensitive-data-in-event-publishers

Paired AL samples under samples/security/<slug>/{bad,good}.al, object
IDs 50200-50231 (no overlap with performance 50100-50140).

Rubber-duck findings addressed:
- HttpClient secret-URI: SetSecretRequestUri is on HttpRequestMessage
  (not HttpClient). Rewrote use-secrettext-with-httpclient and its
  good sample to use HttpRequestMessage + HttpClient.Send.
- InherentPermissions only grants access to same-extension objects;
  the sample now defines its own table 50230 "Sec Sample Lookup" and
  grants 'r' on that, not on Database::Customer.
- Reworked compose-secrets-with-secretstrsubstno bad.al away from
  Format(SecretText) (unreliable) to a plain Text+StrSubstNo anti-
  pattern.
- Moved normative guidance out of Description in three articles
  (compose-secrets-..., prefer-azure-key-vault-..., use-inherent-...)
  so it sits in Best Practice / Anti Pattern per READ contract.
- Added a companion helper codeunit (50231) to the indirect-permissions
  good sample so it actually demonstrates the controlled write path.
- Rebuilt the event-publisher good/bad pair on the same ExportCustomer
  scenario so the contrast is the shape of the event signature, not a
  different event.

Also: broaden samples/README.md object-ID range note to 50100-50299.

Co-authored-by: Copilot <223556219+Copilot@users.noreply.github.com>
2026-04-17 13:39:50 +02:00

1.4 KiB

bc-version domain keywords technologies countries application-area
26..28
security
secretstrsubstno
secrettext
composition
al
w1
all

Compose secrets with SecretStrSubstNo

Seed article. Converted from an existing security-review prompt to bootstrap the BCQuality security corpus. Domain stewards should expand, restructure, and refine as needed.

Description

SecretStrSubstNo is the SecretText analogue of StrSubstNo. The template is a regular string literal; substitution arguments may be SecretText; the return value is SecretText. Intermediate results of the composition are never materialized as plaintext.

Best Practice

Format SecretText templates with SecretStrSubstNo. This is the correct primitive for building authorization headers, secret URIs, and any other formatted string that embeds a SecretText. Provide the static parts of the template as a regular string literal; only the substitutions carry the secret value.

See sample: samples/security/compose-secrets-with-secretstrsubstno/good.al.

Anti Pattern

Using StrSubstNo (or plain string concatenation) on a plain-Text token to build an authorization header. The result is a Text containing the secret in plaintext, visible in the debugger, inspectable in snapshot debug sessions, and captured by any logging the caller does not control. SecretText should have been used end-to-end.

See sample: samples/security/compose-secrets-with-secretstrsubstno/bad.al.