Container update detection only ever negotiated anonymous pull tokens, so
containers from registries that reject anonymous digest HEADs pinned a
permanent "authentication required" badge (#1706). The agent already runs
on the Docker host, so the checker now resolves the same credential store
docker pull uses - config.json auths entries, credsStore/credHelpers
credential helpers (docker-credential-<name> get), and Podman's auth.json -
and presents the stored login: Basic auth on Bearer token negotiation and
on the hardcoded Docker Hub / ghcr.io token endpoints, direct answers to
Basic challenges, and the refresh-token grant for identity-token logins
such as Azure ACR.
Credentials never leave the host: they are only presented to the registry
or its token endpoint, helper output stays out of reported check errors,
and lookups are cached in memory for five minutes. Helper names are
validated before exec, and a stale login falls back to the anonymous path
so checks that used to work keep working. Set
PULSE_DISABLE_REGISTRY_CREDENTIALS=true (--disable-registry-credentials)
to keep detection anonymous-only. The agent-lifecycle and security-privacy
subsystem contracts pin the host-local credential boundary.
The 5.x line is end-of-life and will not be patched for the proxy-auth admin
gating defect, so the docs have to carry its mitigation: a 5.x operator has
nowhere else to look, and the security advisory is a moment in time while this
page is where they actually land.
5.x needs two changes, and either alone leaves admin open. It never applies the
documented "admin" default, so PROXY_AUTH_ADMIN_ROLE must be set explicitly.
It also only evaluates roles when the header carries a value — absent or empty
leaves isAdmin at its true default — so the proxy has to send a placeholder for
users with no groups, which is exactly the case an IdP tends to produce for the
least privileged account. 6.x fixes both: gating activates on the role header
alone, and a blank header resolves to non-admin.
Includes the negative test both ways round, since "it returns 200" is the only
symptom an operator can actually observe.
rcourtman