0patch-lsa-sentinel

A public alert + design for containing the 0patch ↔ Windows LSA Protection conflict.

Windows LSA Protection (RunAsPPL) silently blocks the 0patch agent from loading its loader into lsass.exe, which means 0patch’s lsass-targeted micropatches stop applying — and, per the vendor’s own guidance, you may never notice, because the only warning is a dismissable popup with a "`Don’t show this message again`" checkbox.

You can suppress this. You cannot fix it from the customer side. This repo exists so the trade-off is public, documented, and loud instead of silently hidden.

➡️ Read DESIGN.md — in particular the ⚠️ READ THIS alert section on why “just turn off LSA Protection” is not good enough, and why a patch that cannot be deployed is not the same as a machine that is protected.

What this is

1. An alert. Most operators, faced with the popup, will tick “don’t show again” and move on — leaving a host that reports as protected while it is not. This documents why that is the wrong default.

2. A design (not yet built). A two-layer “reverse isolation” container:

   • Layer A — policy: a penned lsa-open machine-class, so the weakening never leaks to the wider estate; default posture stays LSA-Protection-on.

   • Layer B — sentinel: a read-only watcher that re-enables the signal the popup suppresses and routes it to an unsilenceable work-order (🟢 covered / 🔴 silently-inert / ⚪ moot).

3. Open questions for the 0patch / ACROS Security team — see DESIGN.md §4.

Status

DESIGN — documentation and questions only. No agent code yet. Build order in DESIGN.md §6.

Note on the name

github.com/0patch is an unrelated namesake account, not the micropatching vendor. ACROS Security’s 0patch has no public issue tracker; this repo is an independent, good-faith analysis, not affiliated with or endorsed by ACROS Security.

Licence

Documentation/prose: CC-BY-SA-4.0. Any code added later: MPL-2.0.