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Shynet

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Shynet went silent for two and a half years and a security audit is what woke it up.

web-analyticsself-hosteddjangosecurity-fixesdormant
Current state
Shynet's most recent release closes two externally reported vulnerabilities: a wildcard ALLOWED_HOSTS default enabling password reset poisoning, and stored XSS in two template filters, both credited to an outside security firm. It arrived after a gap of roughly two and a half years, and the release before it was a temporary dependency install workaround. The dashboard features people associate with the project — the annotated world map, the map-versus-table toggle — all date from 2021.
Where it's heading
The arc is a project that had real community momentum and then stopped. In 2021 releases were arriving monthly and were, by the maintainer's own note, driven entirely by contributors; by 2023 the content was dependabot bumps and build workarounds; after that, nothing until a security report forced a response. Nothing in the recent entry suggests development resumed more broadly — it is a targeted fix release, not a return to cadence.
Prediction
These entries give no basis for expecting feature work to resume; the realistic expectation is that the next release, whenever it comes, is again driven by an external security report or a dependency that stops installing.

Recent moves

  1. 4mo ago

    Security and dependency updates

    Removes the wildcard ALLOWED_HOSTS default that allowed password reset poisoning and fixes stored XSS in the urldisplay and iconify template filters, both from an external security report, alongside cache control and dependency repairs. Anyone still running Shynet should treat this as required.

    View source ↗
  2. 3y ago

    Fix Cython/crypto build issues

    A single temporary workaround for a PyYAML dependency that would not install, published as its own release. The content is a build unblock, not a change to the application.

    View source ↗
  3. 3y ago

    Stability and performance improvements

    Mostly dependency bumps across Django, cryptography, requests and sqlparse, with one real change — a dashboard performance fix from a contributor — and a template env addition for generating the Django secret. This is the last release before the long silence.

    View source ↗
  4. 4y ago

    Bug fixes and reliability improvements

    Adds a toggle between the map chart and the country and session table, fixes hits recorded without sessions, and corrects the tracking snippet to display the current host. All four changes came from contributors rather than the maintainer.

    View source ↗
  5. 5y ago

    Dashboard improvements, bug fixes, and upstream security improvements

    Replaces the plain country list with an annotated world map and adds relative bars to tables for at-a-glance comparison. The maintainer notes this is the first Shynet release developed entirely by contributors, which reads differently now that it marks the project's high-water mark.

    View source ↗
  6. 5y ago

    Deploy using GitHub actions

    Moves deployment to GitHub Actions, which brought ARM builds with it. A pipeline change on its face, but the ARM images are what made Shynet practical to self-host on small single-board and ARM VPS deployments.

    View source ↗