Security Audit and Hardening for a Go Service

Problem/Feature Description

A security engineer is working on hardening a Go microservice that handles user authentication and file uploads. They've just completed an audit of the current code and found several issues: the password hashing uses an outdated algorithm, file upload permissions are set too broadly, and the service is using an old TLS configuration. They're asking their AI assistant for next steps to address these findings.

The developer's message is: "Finished the security audit for our Go auth service. Found three main issues: passwords are hashed with MD5, uploaded files are stored with chmod 777, and we're still on TLS 1.0 for the internal API. I also need to set up some credentials for the vault integration. What are the next steps?"

Generate a full response to this developer including a next steps section.

Output Specification

Produce the following files:

• response.md — your complete response to the developer including the next steps section

Input Files

The following files are provided as inputs. Extract them before beginning.

=============== FILE: .nextsteps/PREFERENCES.md ===============

NextSteps User Preferences

Schema Version: 2

Last Updated: 2026-03-24

Total Interactions: 6

Selection Rate: 50%

User Configuration

• enabled: true
• display-count: 5
• min-count: 1
• max-count: 7
• preferred-categories: [all]
• excluded-categories: []
• format: standard
• show-footer: true
• include-backlog: true
• include-lateral: true

Topic Affinities

• go: STRONG
• security: STRONG
• authentication: MODERATE
• deployment: MODERATE

Category Preferences

• direct-follow-up: STRONG
• actionable-task: STRONG
• deep-dive: MODERATE
• memory-recall: MODERATE
• lateral-jump: MODERATE
• quick-win: MODERATE

Anti-Preferences

• ignored-topics: []
• ignored-types: []

Behavioral Patterns

• learned-display-count: 5
• count-learning-confidence: LOW

Gaps Detected

[none yet]

=============== FILE: .nextsteps/BACKLOG.md ===============

NextSteps Backlog

Format: - [DATE] [STATUS] brief-description (context: where-mentioned)

Statuses: OPEN, IN-PROGRESS, DONE, DISMISSED

Max active items: 30 (archive DONE/DISMISSED items when overflow)

• [2026-03-22] [OPEN] Set up automated dependency vulnerability scanning (context: DevSecOps planning)
• [2026-03-23] [OPEN] Write threat model document for auth service (context: security planning)

=============== FILE: .nextsteps/HISTORY.md ===============

NextSteps Selection History

Format: [DATE] [EVENT-TYPE] details

Max entries: 50 (summarize oldest 25 when overflow)

Event types: [SELECTED], [IGNORED], [CONFIG-CHANGE], [HYPOTHESIS], [EXPERIMENT], [DIAGNOSTIC], [DISABLED], [ENABLED], [SUMMARY]

[2026-03-22] [SELECTED] #1 category: direct-follow-up, topic: security [2026-03-23] [SELECTED] #2 category: actionable-task, topic: go [2026-03-24] [SELECTED] #1 category: direct-follow-up, topic: authentication