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Rudolph

Rudolph is Airbnb's open-source Santa sync server, released at github.com/airbnb/rudolph. Santa clients on each laptop periodically pull rule updates from a sync server; Rudolph is the canonical OSS implementation of that server for organisations that want to run Santa at fleet scale without building a sync server from scratch.

The sync server is where Santa's rule management happens in production:

  • Holds the global ruleset (allowlist + blocklist + compiler / PathRegex / package rules) and distributes it to fleet laptops.
  • Typically ingests rules as config-as-code from a Git repo (no direct server-side editing), so rule changes flow through code review.
  • Receives block events from clients when a binary hits the enforcement path with no matching allow rule — the hook where downstream systems (Slack apps, malware scanners, audit pipelines) plug in.
  • Issues machine-specific rules when self-service approvals land (one user approving an app on their own laptop shouldn't loosen the global ruleset).

Customisation surface in production deployments

The vanilla Rudolph release is the starting point. Real deployments bolt on:

  • Integration with a malware-check service (e.g., ReversingLabs or equivalent) so block events can be auto-evaluated before they reach the user.
  • Slack — or other ops-channel — app for self-service approval, implementing patterns/self-service-block-approval.
  • Package Rule system on top of the static rule config, running a workflow that auto-regenerates Binary (SHA-256) rules when upstream package versions change — see patterns/package-rule-auto-generation.
  • Group-based rule scoping — associate rules with user-groups (engineers, data scientists, finance) so permissive rules required by specialist workflows don't widen the security posture fleet-wide.
  • MDM-triggered immediate sync — an API from the sync server back through MDM to fire santactl sync on a specific device, collapsing the approval-to-enforcement latency from the default 60-second pull cycle down to a few seconds.

Seen in

  • sources/2026-04-21-figma-rolling-out-santa-without-freezing-productivity — Figma's Endpoint Security team forked and customised Rudolph as the sync-server base. Customisations enumerated: Slack app integration (block-event → malware-check → approve/deny UI), Package Rule system (~200 package rules → ~80,000 Binary rules, 30-minute refresh on macOS runners), group-based rule sets (scopes permissive Compiler / PathRegex rules to engineers + data scientists), MDM-triggered immediate-sync API (cut 60s → 3s enforcement latency for self-approvals).
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