pinside is a command-line tool and a Python library. It reads local files, and it writes files where you tell it to. It has:

• No runtime dependencies. pyproject.toml lists none, and CI installs the package into a bare environment and runs the CLI from it.
• No network access. Nothing in src/ opens a socket. It does not fetch footprints, check for updates, or report usage.
• No execution of what it reads. A .kicad_pcb is parsed as S-expressions by sexpr.py into lists and strings. There is no eval, no pickle, and no code path that runs anything out of a board file or a config.

pinside generate and pinside project create directories and files, and --force lets them write into a non-empty directory. Both refuse by default to write into a directory pinside did not produce (PF003). Neither ever writes to the KiCad sources it reads.

The firmware pinside generates is C for a microcontroller. It is compiled by you, from a source tree you can read: only src/fixture_config.c and a block of test assertions are generated, and the rest is copied verbatim from src/pinside/firmware/templates/.

Report anything security-relevant privately, not as a public issue:

Open a private security advisory on this repository. That reaches the maintainers without the report being public, and it is the only channel worth using: an issue is visible the moment it is filed.

Please include the input that triggers it. A board file or a config is usually the whole reproduction. If you cannot share the file, the shape of it (which primitive, how deeply nested, how large) is usually enough.

Expect an acknowledgement within a week. Because pinside is a local, offline tool, most findings will be handled as ordinary bugs in the open, with credit. Anything that is not gets a fix and an advisory before it is described.

In scope: anything that makes pinside write outside the directory it was pointed at, crash in a way that could be exploited by a crafted board file, or produce firmware that does not match its own config hash.

Out of scope: the safety of a fixture built from pinside's output. That is what the checks are for, and they are advisory. Nothing pinside prints substitutes for checking the drill plan against the real board before you order it.