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Signature and replay-window gate

The product gate requires verifying a signature and setting a replay window before any webhook event is considered valid or status-updating. Unsigned or stale events are treated as failed and do not trigger any ledger changes.

Accepting unverified or delayed webhook payloads exposes prepaid accounts to forged balances and replay-driven double debits. You must enforce an upfront gate that cryptographically validates signatures and drops any payload timestamped outside a strict tolerance window before mutating funds. Related: Webhook signature and replay window, Inbound webhook retries, Shared status language for product and finance, Debit rows vs delivery status ledger.

Signature verify is a money gate

Money and status truth start only after the signature check passes. Missing, mismatched, or skipped signatures fail closed — no ledger row, no "delivered anyway for the pilot." Catalog Live does not waive the gate. Habits depth: Webhook signature and replay window. Soft USD 1,000/month treats "accept unsigned in staging forever" as production debt; USD 20 proves one forged body never posts a debit.

Replay window before status truth

Gate check Pass means Fail means
Signature present + valid Authenticated event Reject; no money/status write
Timestamp inside window Fresh enough to trust Reject as replay/stale
Event ID not seen First accept ACK without second debit
Contract event listed In buyer event menu Drop unknown type .

At-least-once delivery will retry. A late retry outside the window is not "maybe delivered." Log window rejects separately from signature fails. Inbound retry depth: Inbound webhook retries.

Fail closed when the gate rejects

Rejected events never invent success. Product and finance share the same reject words — not hero upstream codes: Shared status language for product and finance. Debit rows stay aligned with accepted events only: Debit rows vs delivery status ledger. Side effects after ACK only; CRM work before the gate manufactures double truth.

Product, finance, and ops share one proof

Product: Can a legitimate signed, in-window event update status once? Finance: Does every money-affecting event show gate pass on the same UTC window? Ops: Export signature fails vs window rejects without Slack archaeology? Soft volume language stays blocked until the duplicate-in-window smoke shows one ledger line.

Buyer checklist for the signature replay gate

  1. Signature middleware on every production consumer before paid traffic? 2. Replay window named, logged, and bounded — not "weeks"? 3. Gate reject never writes money or success status? 4. Duplicate in-window event ID → one end state, no second debit.

Start with IOSOR

IOSOR is white-label prepaid. USD 20 funds a gate pilot on one consumer; soft review near USD 1,000/month prices skips verification as forged-status risk. Clients see white-label reject macros only.

IOSOR takeaway

Soft review of USD 1,000/month plans treats accepting unsigned events in staging indefinitely as production debt. A USD 20 pilot demonstrates that a single forged event body does not trigger a debit entry.

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