Wrangling Untrusted File Formats Safely
This report summarizes scanner evidence for google/wuffs, a C project with 4,848 GitHub stars. SynthScan examined 159,892 lines of code across 451 source files, recording 665 pattern matches distributed across 6 syntactic categories. The legacy adjusted pattern signal is 4.4 (Low pattern signal); it is not an authorship estimate.
Use the findings to ask whether maintainers can explain intent, verify dependencies, simplify unnecessary scaffolding, and focus review effort. Risk Payload v1 adds ownership, supply-chain, over-engineering, and review-effort vectors when available. These are prompts for human verification, not probabilities, security findings, or measured maintenance costs.
Use each vector to guide manual verification of the underlying findings.
Can maintainers explain intent, assumptions, and trade-offs? 647 finding(s).
Are imports declared and package/API names verified? 0 finding(s).
Are wrappers, guards, and repeated structures necessary? 18 finding(s).
Which changes need focused human review? 665 finding(s).
This chart tracks the legacy adjusted pattern score across scan runs. Changes can reflect source changes, scan coverage, or detector/scoring versions; they do not measure AI adoption or prove that a team refactored code. Compare runs only when their scoring versions are compatible. The dashed line tracks the raw pattern-hit count.
Groups findings by configured severity weight. Severity is not a confidence estimate, security rating, or proof that a package is missing. Verify imports against the project's manifests and inspect each finding in its local design context.
This horizontal bar chart shows where configured pattern scores accumulate across directories. Treat the bars as locations to inspect, not as evidence of authorship or code quality. Use the file-level findings to decide whether a directory needs a focused ownership, dependency, complexity, or review check.
The scanner identified 665 distinct pattern matches across 6 syntactic categories. Each entry below represents a discrete location in the source code where the engine recorded a detector match to inspect in context. Expand any category row to inspect the individual file paths, line numbers, code snippets, and the lexical context (CODE, COMMENT, or STRING) in which each match was detected.
Reading the findings table: The Severity column indicates the configured finding weight (CRITICAL / HIGH / MEDIUM / LOW). The Context column identifies whether the match occurred inside executable code, an inline comment, or a string literal — legacy comment-context matches receive a ×1.5 score weight. The ⚡ bolt icon marks clustered matches: three or more patterns within a 10-line window, each receiving an additional ×1.5 density multiplier under the legacy scoring model.
| Severity | File | Line | Snippet | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LOW | build-fuzz.sh | 1 | #!/bin/bash -eu | COMMENT |
| LOW | build-example.sh | 1 | #!/bin/bash -eu | COMMENT |
| LOW | build-all.sh | 1 | #!/bin/bash -eu | COMMENT |
| LOW | build-all.sh | 21 | # | COMMENT |
| LOW | cmd/wuffs-c/release.go | 161 | ) | COMMENT |
| LOW | cmd/wuffs-c/release.go | 181 | #pragma GCC diagnostic ignored "-Wimplicit-fallthrough" | COMMENT |
| LOW | cmd/wuffs-c/main.go | 1 | // Copyright 2017 The Wuffs Authors. | COMMENT |
| LOW | cmd/handsum/main.go | 1 | // Copyright 2025 The Wuffs Authors. | COMMENT |
| LOW | cmd/wuffs/main.go | 1 | // Copyright 2017 The Wuffs Authors. | COMMENT |
| LOW | cmd/commonflags/commonflags.go | 1 | // Copyright 2017 The Wuffs Authors. | COMMENT |
| LOW | cmd/dumbindent/main.go | 1 | // Copyright 2020 The Wuffs Authors. | COMMENT |
| LOW | cmd/dumbindent/main.go | 21 | // Pass -spaces=N or -tabs to use N spaces or 1 tab per indent level. The | COMMENT |
| LOW | cmd/dumbindent/main.go | 41 | // real 0m0.668s | COMMENT |
| LOW | cmd/ractool/gen.go | 1 | // Copyright 2019 The Wuffs Authors. | COMMENT |
| LOW | cmd/ractool/main.go | 1 | // Copyright 2019 The Wuffs Authors. | COMMENT |
| LOW | cmd/wuffsfmt/main.go | 1 | // Copyright 2017 The Wuffs Authors. | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/3pdata/fetch-pngsuite.sh | 1 | #!/bin/bash -eu | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/3pdata/fetch-blinksuite.sh | 1 | #!/bin/bash -eu | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/3pdata/fetch-golangsuite.sh | 1 | #!/bin/bash -eu | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/3pdata/fetch-tgasuite.sh | 1 | #!/bin/bash -eu | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/3pdata/fetch-webpsuite.sh | 1 | #!/bin/bash -eu | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/3pdata/fetch-bmpsuite.sh | 1 | #!/bin/bash -eu | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/3pdata/fetch-xzsuite.sh | 1 | #!/bin/bash -eu | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/3pdata/fetch-xzsuite.sh | 21 | # Check out a specific commit (from February 2024). | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/3pdata/fetch-xzsuite.sh | 41 | # contains a backdoor: | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/3pdata/fetch-xzsuite.sh | 61 | # nigeltao/xz-tests-files at 6e0194063a6dc205d4db35e307778efe1c9f1875 does | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/3pdata/fetch-xzsuite.sh | 81 | # | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/data/hello.sh | 1 | #!/bin/bash -eu | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/data/artificial-thumbhash/make.go | 1 | // Copyright 2024 The Wuffs Authors. | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/data/artificial-thumbhash/make.go | 21 | // of the original thumbhash description or implementation. But "\xC3\xBE" is | COMMENT |
| LOW | …if/pixel-data-too-much-bad-lzw.gif.make-artificial.txt | 21 | # The frame area is 4 pixels and we supply 4 but then an invalid LZW code. | COMMENT |
| LOW | …icial-gif/multiple-loop-counts.gif.make-artificial.txt | 1 | # Feed this file to script/make-artificial.go | COMMENT |
| LOW | …f/pixel-data-too-much-good-lzw.gif.make-artificial.txt | 21 | # The frame area is 4 pixels but we supply 5 (that's still valid LZW data). | COMMENT |
| LOW | …a/artificial-gif/metadata-full.gif.make-artificial.txt | 21 | # Application Identifier "ICCRGBG1". | COMMENT |
| LOW | …ficial-gif/frame-out-of-bounds.gif.make-artificial.txt | 1 | # Feed this file to script/make-artificial.go | COMMENT |
| LOW | …ficial-gif/frame-out-of-bounds.gif.make-artificial.txt | 21 | # 5. Expand the image width×height to 4×5, so that no frames are clipped. This | COMMENT |
| LOW | …ficial-gif/frame-out-of-bounds.gif.make-artificial.txt | 41 | # but a surprised user filed https://github.com/golang/go/issues/20856 when | COMMENT |
| LOW | …l-deflate/distance-code-31.deflate.make-artificial.txt | 1 | # Feed this file to script/make-artificial.go | COMMENT |
| LOW | …a/artificial-bzip2/huffman-258.bz2.make-artificial.txt | 21 | bits 16 0xFFFF | COMMENT |
| LOW | …a/artificial-bzip2/huffman-258.bz2.make-artificial.txt | 61 | COMMENT | |
| LOW | test/data/artificial-xz-filter/make.go | 1 | // Copyright 2024 The Wuffs Authors. | COMMENT |
| LOW | …rtificial-jpeg/make-hippopotamus-bad-comment-length.go | 1 | // Copyright 2024 The Wuffs Authors. | COMMENT |
| LOW | …rtificial-jpeg/make-hippopotamus-bad-comment-length.go | 21 | // the itu-t81.pdf spec section B.1.1.4 "Marker segments") but libjpeg-turbo is | COMMENT |
| LOW | …data/artificial-jpeg/make-hippopotamus-sof-dht-swap.go | 1 | // Copyright 2024 The Wuffs Authors. | COMMENT |
| LOW | …data/artificial-jpeg/make-hippopotamus-sof-dht-swap.go | 21 | // | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/c/mimiclib/jpeg.c | 1 | // Copyright 2023 The Wuffs Authors. | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/c/mimiclib/webp.c | 1 | // Copyright 2024 The Wuffs Authors. | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/c/mimiclib/xxhash.c | 1 | // Copyright 2023 The Wuffs Authors. | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/c/mimiclib/lzma.c | 1 | // Copyright 2023 The Wuffs Authors. | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/c/mimiclib/deflate-gzip-zlib.c | 1 | // Copyright 2017 The Wuffs Authors. | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/c/mimiclib/openssl.c | 1 | // Copyright 2023 The Wuffs Authors. | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/c/mimiclib/gif.c | 1 | // Copyright 2017 The Wuffs Authors. | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/c/mimiclib/gif.c | 41 | COMMENT | |
| LOW | test/c/mimiclib/png.c | 1 | // Copyright 2020 The Wuffs Authors. | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/c/mimiclib/png.c | 21 | // #define WUFFS_MIMICLIB_USE_STB_IMAGE_INSTEAD_OF_LIBPNG 1 | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/c/mimiclib/png.c | 281 | for (size_t i = 0; i < quirks_len; i++) { | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/c/mimiclib/bzip2.c | 1 | // Copyright 2022 The Wuffs Authors. | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/c/mimiclib/stb.c | 1 | // Copyright 2023 The Wuffs Authors. | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/c/std/json.c | 41 | // To use that single file as a "foo.c"-like implementation, instead of a | COMMENT |
| LOW | test/c/std/json.c | 3441 | COMMENT | |
| 578 more matches not shown… | ||||
| Severity | File | Line | Snippet | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MEDIUM | build-fuzz.sh | 12 | # ---------------- | COMMENT |
| MEDIUM | build-example.sh | 12 | # ---------------- | COMMENT |
| MEDIUM | build-all.sh | 12 | # ---------------- | COMMENT |
| MEDIUM | test/3pdata/fetch-pngsuite.sh | 12 | # ---------------- | COMMENT |
| MEDIUM | test/3pdata/fetch-blinksuite.sh | 12 | # ---------------- | COMMENT |
| MEDIUM | test/3pdata/fetch-golangsuite.sh | 12 | # ---------------- | COMMENT |
| MEDIUM | test/3pdata/fetch-tgasuite.sh | 12 | # ---------------- | COMMENT |
| MEDIUM | test/3pdata/fetch-webpsuite.sh | 12 | # ---------------- | COMMENT |
| MEDIUM | test/3pdata/fetch-bmpsuite.sh | 12 | # ---------------- | COMMENT |
| MEDIUM | test/3pdata/fetch-xzsuite.sh | 12 | # ---------------- | COMMENT |
| MEDIUM | test/data/hello.sh | 12 | # ---------------- | COMMENT |
| MEDIUM | hello-wuffs-c/run.sh | 12 | # ---------------- | COMMENT |
| MEDIUM | script/print-nia-checksums.sh | 12 | # ---------------- | COMMENT |
| MEDIUM | script/confirm-matches-djpeg.sh | 12 | # ---------------- | COMMENT |
| MEDIUM | script/bench-history.sh | 12 | # ---------------- | COMMENT |
| MEDIUM | script/print-mzcat-checksums.sh | 12 | # ---------------- | COMMENT |
| MEDIUM | script/run-json-test-suite.sh | 12 | # ---------------- | COMMENT |
| MEDIUM | doc/note/enumerated-media-types.txt | 2 | # ---------------------- | COMMENT |
| Severity | File | Line | Snippet | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MEDIUM⚡ | test/data/nobel-prizes.json | 1 | {"prizes":[{"year":"2019","category":"chemistry","laureates":[{"id":"976","firstname":"John","surname":"Goodenough","mot | CODE |
| MEDIUM⚡ | test/data/nobel-prizes.json | 1 | {"prizes":[{"year":"2019","category":"chemistry","laureates":[{"id":"976","firstname":"John","surname":"Goodenough","mot | CODE |
| MEDIUM⚡ | test/data/nobel-prizes.json | 1 | {"prizes":[{"year":"2019","category":"chemistry","laureates":[{"id":"976","firstname":"John","surname":"Goodenough","mot | CODE |
| MEDIUM | internal/cgen/liveness.go | 50 | // Essentially, the state transitions are: strong is sticky, weak to strong | COMMENT |
| MEDIUM | internal/cgen/base/token-public.h | 93 | // for 1_DST_1_SRC_COPY) are in the FOO format. Definitely means that the lack | COMMENT |
| Severity | File | Line | Snippet | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MEDIUM | cmd/ractool/data.go | 136 | $ # Create a shared dictionary. Using zstd-the-program produces a | CODE |
| MEDIUM | cmd/ractool/main.go | 137 | $ # Create a shared dictionary. Using zstd-the-program produces a | CODE |
| Severity | File | Line | Snippet | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LOW | hello-wuffs-c/wuffs-parse.c | 35 | // // No need to call wuffs_demo__parser__initialize, but don't forget to | COMMENT |
| Severity | File | Line | Snippet | Context |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LOW | internal/cgen/base/image-public.h | 500 | // TODO: implement the other modes. | COMMENT |