fix: enforce production transport policy

Every PostgreSQL connection this repository opened was plaintext, in every
environment: no connection site set `ssl` at all, so credentials, session
tokens, and row data crossed the network in the clear and nothing in
configuration, startup, or `pnpm doctor` said so. The public identity URL
boundary was also looser than it appeared.

`core/src/database/transport.ts` is now the one typed policy. It has exactly two
modes: `verify-full` (TLS required, certificate chain verified, and server
identity verified against the configured host — the production default) and
`disable` (the development/test default, refused outright in production). There
is deliberately no encryption-only `require` mode, no chain-only `verify-ca`,
and no `rejectUnauthorized: false` escape hatch anywhere in the configuration
surface; every loose or aliased spelling is rejected in both environments, so a
typo never quietly becomes a weaker mode. Production has no plaintext exception
at all, not even for a loopback database — a connection string cannot prove the
database is process-local.

Verification is certificate *and* hostname. The policy supplies an explicit
`checkServerIdentity` pinned to the host parsed from DATABASE_URL, because the
pinned driver sets TLS `servername` only for non-IP hosts and Node performs no
identity check when it is unset — so `rejectUnauthorized: true` alone accepts a
certificate from any host the trusted CA ever signed when connecting by IP.
Both halves are proven against a real TLS-enabled PostgreSQL, including that the
same connection without the pinned callback succeeds. Every CA, certificate, and
key is generated at test runtime and deleted afterwards.

A DATABASE_URL may no longer carry its own TLS parameters. The pinned driver
merges parsed connection-string values over explicitly passed options, so a
`?sslmode=disable` in the URL would silently replace the policy's verified `ssl`
object; that now fails with a stable code, reported by both `pnpm doctor` and
the migration CLIs rather than as "failed unexpectedly".

One shared environment reader keeps `process.env` out of Core's reusable
constructors, and every executable that opens a connection resolves the policy
identically: the API (validated before any pool, Better Auth instance, module
runtime, or listener exists), both migration commands, the bootstrap CLI, and
Doctor's own connection. Doctor reports it as a blocking failure, never a
warning, naming only the effective mode.

Separately, the identity base URL and every trusted origin must now be exactly
one canonical origin — the WHATWG origin serialization must equal the supplied
string — so a path, trailing slash, credentials, explicit default port, or
non-canonical case is rejected rather than normalized into something that no
longer matches what a browser sends. Production's loopback rejection now
classifies the address instead of comparing against three literals, covering
`.localhost`, all of 127.0.0.0/8, 0.0.0.0, `::`, expanded and IPv4-mapped
forms. This is a configuration-shape guarantee only: it does not resolve DNS or
prove reachability, and TLS protects the connection, not the exposure.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <[email protected]>

core/src/identity/config.ts

@@ -18,12 +18,108 @@ export type IdentityConfigErrorCode =
   | "TRUSTED_ORIGINS_MISSING";
 
 const MIN_SECRET_LENGTH = 32;
-const LOOPBACK_HOSTNAMES: ReadonlySet<string> = new Set([
-  "localhost",
-  "127.0.0.1",
-  "::1",
-  "0.0.0.0",
-]);
+
+/**
+ * Hostnames that are never a legitimate public production origin, matched exactly (after WHATWG
+ * URL canonicalization, which already folds `127.1`, `2130706433`, and `0x7f000001` into
+ * `127.0.0.1`, and lowercases every hostname).
+ *
+ * This is a purely *syntactic* classifier. It rejects literal and reserved loopback/unspecified
+ * spellings; it performs no DNS resolution, so it cannot and does not prove that some arbitrary
+ * public name will never resolve to a loopback address later. Network reachability remains the
+ * deployment's own firewall/DNS responsibility.
+ */
+const IPV4_LOOPBACK_BLOCK = /^127\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}$/u;
+const UNSPECIFIED_HOSTNAMES: ReadonlySet<string> = new Set(["0.0.0.0", "[::]"]);
+const LITERAL_LOOPBACK_HOSTNAMES: ReadonlySet<string> = new Set(["localhost"]);
+
+/** Expands a bracketed IPv6 `URL.hostname` into its 8 canonical 16-bit groups, or `undefined` when
+ * the value is not a bracketed IPv6 literal. Handles `::` zero-compression and the mixed
+ * `::ffff:a.b.c.d` notation the WHATWG parser preserves. */
+function expandIpv6Hostname(hostname: string): readonly number[] | undefined {
+  if (!hostname.startsWith("[") || !hostname.endsWith("]")) {
+    return undefined;
+  }
+  let body = hostname.slice(1, -1);
+  // Mixed notation: translate a trailing dotted-quad into two hex groups.
+  const dotted = /^(.*:)(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})\.(\d{1,3})$/u.exec(body);
+  if (dotted) {
+    const octets = [dotted[2], dotted[3], dotted[4], dotted[5]].map((part) => Number(part));
+    if (octets.some((octet) => !Number.isInteger(octet) || octet < 0 || octet > 255)) {
+      return undefined;
+    }
+    const high = ((octets[0] as number) << 8) | (octets[1] as number);
+    const low = ((octets[2] as number) << 8) | (octets[3] as number);
+    body = `${dotted[1]}${high.toString(16)}:${low.toString(16)}`;
+  }
+
+  const [head, tail, ...extra] = body.split("::");
+  if (extra.length > 0) {
+    return undefined;
+  }
+  const parseGroups = (value: string | undefined): number[] | undefined => {
+    if (value === undefined || value === "") {
+      return [];
+    }
+    const groups: number[] = [];
+    for (const part of value.split(":")) {
+      if (!/^[0-9a-f]{1,4}$/u.test(part)) {
+        return undefined;
+      }
+      groups.push(Number.parseInt(part, 16));
+    }
+    return groups;
+  };
+  const leading = parseGroups(head);
+  const trailing = tail === undefined ? [] : parseGroups(tail);
+  if (!leading || !trailing) {
+    return undefined;
+  }
+  if (tail === undefined) {
+    return leading.length === 8 ? leading : undefined;
+  }
+  const missing = 8 - leading.length - trailing.length;
+  if (missing < 0) {
+    return undefined;
+  }
+  return [...leading, ...Array.from({ length: missing }, () => 0), ...trailing];
+}
+
+/** Whether a canonicalized `URL.hostname` is a loopback or unspecified listen address in any
+ * spelling this repository accepts — literal name, reserved `.localhost` namespace, the full IPv4
+ * `127.0.0.0/8` block, IPv6 `::1` compressed or expanded, IPv6 `::` unspecified, and IPv4-mapped
+ * IPv6 forms of both in mixed (`::ffff:127.0.0.1`) and hexadecimal (`::ffff:7f00:1`) notation. */
+function isLoopbackOrUnspecifiedHostname(hostname: string): boolean {
+  const normalized = hostname.toLowerCase();
+  if (LITERAL_LOOPBACK_HOSTNAMES.has(normalized) || UNSPECIFIED_HOSTNAMES.has(normalized)) {
+    return true;
+  }
+  // RFC 6761 reserves the entire `.localhost` namespace for loopback.
+  if (normalized.endsWith(".localhost")) {
+    return true;
+  }
+  if (IPV4_LOOPBACK_BLOCK.test(normalized)) {
+    return true;
+  }
+  const groups = expandIpv6Hostname(normalized);
+  if (!groups) {
+    return false;
+  }
+  const isAllZero = groups.every((group) => group === 0);
+  // `::` (unspecified) and `::1` (loopback).
+  if (isAllZero || (groups.slice(0, 7).every((group) => group === 0) && groups[7] === 1)) {
+    return true;
+  }
+  // IPv4-mapped IPv6 (`::ffff:a.b.c.d`): classify the embedded IPv4 address.
+  const isMapped = groups.slice(0, 5).every((group) => group === 0) && groups[5] === 0xffff;
+  if (isMapped) {
+    const high = groups[6] as number;
+    const low = groups[7] as number;
+    const embedded = `${high >> 8}.${high & 0xff}.${low >> 8}.${low & 0xff}`;
+    return IPV4_LOOPBACK_BLOCK.test(embedded) || embedded === "0.0.0.0";
+  }
+  return false;
+}
 
 const errorMessages: Readonly<Record<IdentityConfigErrorCode, string>> = Object.freeze({
   BASE_URL_INSECURE_IN_PRODUCTION: "The identity base URL must use https in production.",
@@ -90,20 +186,38 @@ export interface CreateIdentityConfigOptions {
   readonly environment?: IdentityEnvironment;
 }
 
-function isLoopbackHostname(hostname: string): boolean {
-  return LOOPBACK_HOSTNAMES.has(hostname.toLowerCase());
-}
-
-function parseAbsoluteHttpUrl(value: unknown): URL | undefined {
+/**
+ * Parses one value that must be exactly a canonical absolute `http:`/`https:` **origin** — the
+ * single representation both the identity base URL and every trusted origin use, so no component
+ * of the platform can reinterpret the same deployment differently.
+ *
+ * Canonical means `URL.origin` must equal the configured string byte-for-byte. That one comparison
+ * structurally rejects every non-origin component at once — credentials, any path (including a
+ * bare trailing `/`, since `URL.origin` is slashless), a query, a fragment, surrounding
+ * whitespace, an uppercase hostname, and a redundant default port — because the WHATWG parser
+ * normalizes or preserves each of those in a way that no longer matches `origin`.
+ *
+ * Structural parsing is deliberately separate from environment policy: a caller distinguishes
+ * "this is not an origin" from "this origin is not allowed in production" and reports the
+ * structural code first, so an already-malformed URL is never mislabeled as a production-loopback
+ * failure.
+ */
+function parseCanonicalHttpOrigin(value: unknown): URL | undefined {
   if (typeof value !== "string" || value.length === 0) {
     return undefined;
   }
+  let url: URL;
   try {
-    const url = new URL(value);
-    return url.protocol === "http:" || url.protocol === "https:" ? url : undefined;
+    url = new URL(value);
   } catch {
     return undefined;
   }
+  if (url.protocol !== "http:" && url.protocol !== "https:") {
+    return undefined;
+  }
+  // `URL.origin` carries no credentials, path, query, or fragment, and is already lowercased with
+  // any default port elided — so requiring exact equality is the whole canonical-origin rule.
+  return url.origin === value ? url : undefined;
 }
 
 function validateSecret(secret: unknown): string {
@@ -126,7 +240,11 @@ function validateBaseUrl(baseUrl: unknown, environment: IdentityEnvironment): st
   if (typeof baseUrl !== "string" || baseUrl.length === 0) {
     throw new IdentityConfigError("BASE_URL_MISSING");
   }
-  const url = parseAbsoluteHttpUrl(baseUrl);
+  // Structural validity first, in every environment: the base URL is the public origin of the
+  // already-fixed `/api/auth` transport, and Ekklesia does not support mounting Better Auth
+  // beneath a configurable URL path. A credentialed, pathed, queried, fragmented, whitespace-
+  // padded, or otherwise non-canonical spelling is structurally invalid, never a policy failure.
+  const url = parseCanonicalHttpOrigin(baseUrl);
   if (!url) {
     throw new IdentityConfigError("BASE_URL_INVALID");
   }
@@ -134,11 +252,13 @@ function validateBaseUrl(baseUrl: unknown, environment: IdentityEnvironment): st
     if (url.protocol !== "https:") {
       throw new IdentityConfigError("BASE_URL_INSECURE_IN_PRODUCTION");
     }
-    if (isLoopbackHostname(url.hostname)) {
+    if (isLoopbackOrUnspecifiedHostname(url.hostname)) {
       throw new IdentityConfigError("BASE_URL_LOOPBACK_IN_PRODUCTION");
     }
   }
-  return baseUrl;
+  // Store the canonical origin — identical to what `validateTrustedOrigin` stores — so CORS,
+  // Better Auth's own origin checks, and this base URL can never disagree about the same origin.
+  return url.origin;
 }
 
 function validateTrustedOrigin(origin: unknown, environment: IdentityEnvironment): string {
@@ -152,19 +272,21 @@ function validateTrustedOrigin(origin: unknown, environment: IdentityEnvironment
   if (origin.includes("*") || origin.includes("?")) {
     throw new IdentityConfigError("TRUSTED_ORIGIN_WILDCARD_UNSUPPORTED");
   }
-  const url = parseAbsoluteHttpUrl(origin);
-  if (!url || url.origin !== origin) {
+  const url = parseCanonicalHttpOrigin(origin);
+  if (!url) {
     throw new IdentityConfigError("TRUSTED_ORIGIN_INVALID");
   }
   if (environment === "production") {
     if (url.protocol !== "https:") {
       throw new IdentityConfigError("TRUSTED_ORIGIN_INSECURE_IN_PRODUCTION");
     }
-    if (isLoopbackHostname(url.hostname)) {
+    // The identical classifier the base URL uses, so the two can never disagree about whether the
+    // same host is a production-legal origin.
+    if (isLoopbackOrUnspecifiedHostname(url.hostname)) {
       throw new IdentityConfigError("TRUSTED_ORIGIN_LOOPBACK_IN_PRODUCTION");
     }
   }
-  return origin;
+  return url.origin;
 }
 
 /**

core/src/identity/database.ts

@@ -1,5 +1,9 @@
 import { drizzle, type NodePgDatabase } from "drizzle-orm/node-postgres";
 import { Pool, type PoolConfig } from "pg";
+import {
+  type DatabaseTransportPolicy,
+  databaseTlsConnectionOptions,
+} from "../database/transport.js";
 import { identityAdapterSchema } from "./schema.js";
 
 export type IdentityDrizzleDatabase = NodePgDatabase<typeof identityAdapterSchema>;
@@ -28,6 +32,10 @@ export interface IdentityDatabaseOptions {
    * indefinitely. `connectionTimeoutMs` alone only bounds establishing a connection — it does
    * nothing once a query is already running on one. */
   readonly operationTimeoutMs?: number;
+  /** The validated transport policy (`core/src/database/transport.js`). Passed explicitly by
+   * every production executable; omitted by single-domain unit/integration factories that use
+   * the disposable loopback database, which keeps the pre-existing plaintext behavior. */
+  readonly transport?: DatabaseTransportPolicy;
 }
 
 export interface IdentityDatabaseHandle {
@@ -81,8 +89,13 @@ export function createIdentityDrizzleDatabase(
   const validatedConnectionString = validateConnectionString(connectionString);
   const validatedConnectionTimeoutMs = validateTimeout(options.connectionTimeoutMs);
   const validatedOperationTimeoutMs = validateTimeout(options.operationTimeoutMs);
+  const ssl =
+    options.transport === undefined
+      ? undefined
+      : databaseTlsConnectionOptions(validatedConnectionString, options.transport);
   const poolConfig: PoolConfig = {
     connectionString: validatedConnectionString,
+    ...(ssl === undefined ? {} : { ssl }),
     ...(validatedConnectionTimeoutMs === undefined
       ? {}
       : { connectionTimeoutMillis: validatedConnectionTimeoutMs }),