The hard block matched raw command text, but a shell resolves quote
splicing (`kick"start"`) and backslash escaping (`kick\start`) into the
literal verb before execution. So `launchctl kick"start" -k
gui/501/ai.hermes.gateway` ran exactly as the blocked `kickstart` form
while both the non-bypassable block and the approval detector missed it —
leaving an approval-bypassing gateway self-lifecycle operation reachable.
contains_gateway_lifecycle_command now runs a second pass over
shlex-tokenized command segments, where quotes and escapes are already
resolved. It stays anchored on a hermes-gateway identifier, so prose and
non-gateway hermes services are unaffected. Because this function is the
single choke point _contains_unsafe_gateway_action calls at every
recursion level, referenced-script and `sh -c` payload scanning inherit
the fix.
tools/approval.py had the same gap for quote splices: backslash escapes
are stripped by _normalize_command_for_detection, but quote splicing in an
ARGUMENT position is not touched by _deobfuscate_shell_word_for_detection
(scoped to command-position words, deliberately — widening it would let
quoted prose match the destructive patterns). It now delegates to the
fixed guard as a last check, so an ordinary pattern match still wins and
keeps its more specific reason string.
Tests: quoted, single-quoted and backslash-spliced verbs across the
launchctl/systemctl/hermes branches, the spliced gateway identifier
itself, a splice nested in an `sh -c` payload (resolves one level deeper,
asserted at the recursive entry point terminal_tool actually calls), plus
negative cases proving prose and non-gateway labels stay unblocked.
Verified on Windows: no regressions — the 10 remaining failures across
tests/tools/test_approval.py, tests/hermes_cli/test_gateway_restart_loop.py
and tests/cron are identical on the unmodified baseline (POSIX file modes,
symlink privileges, and /bin/bash script paths).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Axel Vanni
6d501c2958