This document describes the detailed security threat model for Apache Iceberg Python. It is intended for maintainers and automated security triage.
Apache Iceberg Python is primarily a client library and implementation of the Iceberg table format and catalog interactions for Python applications and services. It is commonly embedded in larger systems that provide their own authentication, authorization, and credential management. Because of that deployment model, many bug classes that look security-relevant in the abstract are not actually security vulnerabilities in Iceberg Python itself.
This model is intended to answer:
- what Iceberg Python generally treats as a security vulnerability
- what Iceberg Python generally treats as correctness, hardening, or deployment work
- which boundaries are primarily owned by Iceberg Python versus the surrounding catalog, application, or service
- which issue classes should be downgraded by default by scanners
This model is scoped to the Apache Iceberg Python repository itself:
- table format and metadata handling
- catalog and REST catalog clients
- transport, credential, and configuration handling implemented in this repo
- helper tooling shipped in this repo
It is not a general threat model for every Python service that embeds Iceberg Python.
In particular, it does not attempt to define the complete security model for:
- applications or services that embed Iceberg Python
- storage-level authorization enforced outside Iceberg Python
Iceberg Python should:
- avoid exposing secrets or delegated credentials to principals that were not already trusted with them
- avoid creating new unauthorized capabilities in Iceberg Python-owned components
- avoid violating trust boundaries that Iceberg Python itself owns, such as leaking auth, transport, or credential-bearing state across catalog or client boundaries in the same process
Iceberg Python does not aim to be the primary enforcement point for:
- user-to-user authorization inside the embedding application
- storage-level authorization
- service-side credential scoping performed by an external catalog
The operator configures the surrounding catalog, application, service, and storage integration around Iceberg Python. This role is trusted to choose endpoints, warehouses, storage integrations, and credentials.
The catalog control plane resolves tables and supplies metadata, locations, configuration, and delegated credentials to Iceberg Python. It may be implemented by a REST catalog server or another catalog implementation. Iceberg Python assumes this control plane is trusted and outside its primary security boundary.
The REST catalog client consumes catalog-provided metadata, configuration, and credentials. Client-side bugs in routing, caching, or reuse may still be security-relevant if they leak credential-bearing state across boundaries that the Iceberg Python client is expected to preserve.
Applications and services embedding Iceberg Python are responsible for their own user-facing authorization boundaries unless Iceberg Python explicitly documents otherwise.
This role may already have legitimate power to write or replace table metadata, write or delete files, choose paths under an allowed warehouse or table location, and invoke destructive maintenance operations. If a report only shows a new way to achieve the same effect this role can already cause legitimately, it is usually not a security issue in Iceberg Python.
The following are generally treated as trusted operator or deployment inputs:
- catalog properties
- endpoint configuration
- warehouse and storage roots
- transport wiring and credential configuration
If a report depends on the attacker controlling those values directly, it is usually not a vulnerability in Iceberg Python itself.
Iceberg Python often accepts metadata locations, table properties, namespace properties, and related control-plane information from a catalog. By default, Iceberg Python treats those sources as trusted.
This means a malicious catalog supplying incorrect or malicious metadata is usually not an Iceberg Python vulnerability by itself.
In REST deployments, Iceberg Python may also accept service endpoints, configuration, and delegated storage access from the REST catalog server. By default, those are treated as trusted control-plane inputs unless Iceberg Python explicitly documents a stronger guarantee.
This means a malicious REST catalog server sending dangerous endpoints is usually not an Iceberg Python vulnerability by itself. It also means many credential-selection bugs are often correctness or specification issues rather than security boundary failures.
The major exception is secret exposure. If Iceberg Python surfaces credentials or secrets to a new audience that was not already trusted with them, that is security-relevant.
Object store permissions are enforced by the storage provider and the credentials the surrounding deployment chooses to hand to Iceberg Python. Iceberg Python is not the root authority for bucket- or object-level authorization.
The following categories are generally security-relevant in Iceberg Python when the report is credible and reproducible.
Examples include:
- catalog or storage credentials exposed through a user-visible surface
- one catalog's credentials or auth state leaking into another catalog or client
Security issues exist when Iceberg Python itself is expected to separate catalogs, clients, or principals and fails to do so.
Examples include:
- process-global auth or transport state crossing catalog instances
- secret-bearing state from one principal reused for another principal within an Iceberg Python-owned boundary
These categories may still be real bugs worth fixing, but they are not usually security vulnerabilities in Iceberg Python itself.
Examples include incorrect metadata handling, ambiguous matching semantics, and logic bugs that do not create a new trust-boundary violation.
Malformed-input crashes, runtime exceptions, and memory amplification are usually treated as robustness or hardening work rather than security issues in Iceberg Python itself.
Reports that require a malicious catalog or other external control-plane service are usually outside Iceberg Python's primary security boundary.
If the actor already has a legitimate capability that can cause the same harm, the new path is usually not a security issue.
A scanner targeting Iceberg Python should treat a finding as higher-confidence only if it plausibly shows one of the following:
- exposure of a secret or delegated credential to a new audience
- creation of a new unauthorized capability in an Iceberg Python-owned component
- violation of an Iceberg Python-owned trust boundary rather than a surrounding catalog, application, service, or operator boundary
A finding should be downgraded or rejected by default if it instead depends primarily on:
- malformed-input robustness or denial-of-service behavior
- a malicious catalog or external service
- a principal that already has equivalent power through legitimate write or maintenance capabilities