The clock the author couldn't rewrite

说明与用途

年龄检查依赖文件 mtime，导致可被伪造。将时间戳移至追加式日志消除了误报。

问题

File timestamps were used to enforce age checks, allowing authors to forge file mtime and bypass the guard.

结果

All false positives eliminated; 115 instruments checked with 4 dirty historical copies, no new false positives.

工作流

• 1. Record window start and instrument birth timestamps in an append-only ledger file.
• 2. For each citation, read the oldest full timestamp for the citing window from the ledger.
• 3. Compare instrument birth timestamp against this ledger entry; ignore file mtime.
• 4. Reject citations where instrument is newer than the window timestamp.
• 5. Run acceptance tests and regression sweep to validate changes.

证据

The fix moves the clock somewhere the author cannot reach: the experiment ledger, an append-only file where every window leaves a timestamped line.

来源

After both corrections, the discriminator proves the point: a citation of an instrument born after the citing window's timestamp is flagged, and forging that instrument's mtime back to 2020 changes nothing — exit code stays 1.

来源