Posts by soatok@furry.engineer
(DIR) Post #B1zEwywBM2h5Y7965A by soatok@furry.engineer
2026-01-05T20:20:12Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
Me: We all know PGP is bad because it forces you to support legacy bullshit like 1024-bit RSA keys, but I'm specifically going to write a blog post about email encryption as not just a technical challenge.@delta: subtoots my blog postTheir source code: Disables TLS security to support legacy 1024-bit RSA.https://github.com/chatmail/core/blob/9d7db202256ee334260c7ebccc3ab6403ee59a6c/src/net/tls.rs#L27-L40
(DIR) Post #B1zGBA8CdHdKH65t2G by soatok@furry.engineer
2026-01-05T21:17:16Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
By the way, if you don't want to ever risk getting 0day'd by a furry blog, and instead want me to follow coordinated disclosure policies, don't try to make things my problem.
(DIR) Post #B1zGBG2keSq0bvacN6 by soatok@furry.engineer
2026-01-05T21:21:12Z
2 likes, 0 repeats
What does "making [things] Soatok's problem" look like?It takes many forms, but the most common in recent years are:Trying to talk over me to recommend your favorite tech product insteadBeing a smarmy arrogant bitch while subtooting me on FediBasically, don't be a dick, and I won't be one.Now to decide if I want to take more than a shallow glance at Delta Chat this month...
(DIR) Post #B1zU01BwvbZkipQVyS by soatok@furry.engineer
2026-01-05T23:55:19Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
A BlueSky user told me they use Tuta mail not because they believe their spiel about privacy but because they used to use Yahoo mail and Yahoo decided to start reading emails for AI and they wanted a provider that was unlikely to do that.And, y'know what? Good threat model for Tuta, Proton, etc.
(DIR) Post #B251jqQUEVivz7nkFU by soatok@furry.engineer
2026-01-08T15:36:49Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
Do you have an opinion on Delta Chat?https://soatok.blog/encrypted-messaging-apps/Do you have an opinion on SimpleX?https://soatok.blog/encrypted-messaging-apps/Do you have an opinion on Olvid?https://soatok.blog/encrypted-messaging-apps/Do you--Please stop.
(DIR) Post #B29NedhX5mZWh8XNKq by soatok@furry.engineer
2026-01-10T18:33:48Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
RE: https://furry.engineer/@soatok/115860216858204018I'm not joking. It's seriously fucking annoying to be needled with so many goddamn queries from strangers all the time.
(DIR) Post #B2IkS4zON4nQvmVhA0 by soatok@furry.engineer
2026-01-14T23:53:56Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
This is a must-read.https://cryptography.io/en/latest/statements/state-of-openssl/#python #cryptography #crypto #openssl #opensource
(DIR) Post #B2Y9nMWXVWUxM9D1SC by soatok@furry.engineer
2026-01-22T17:24:03Z
1 likes, 0 repeats
RE: https://mastodon.social/@VeroniqueB99/115939509981692384The abbreviation for for "Encrypt then MAC" is "EtM" in some software...
(DIR) Post #B2aOEHEr3MDqSQaL4q by soatok@furry.engineer
2026-01-23T15:24:36Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
harmless design decision + obvious thing to do by default + sensible trade-off that minimizes support burden for dev teams + obvious thing to do = CVSS 10
(DIR) Post #B2aOEIw8juRNixqQBU by soatok@furry.engineer
2026-01-23T15:26:39Z
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common programming habit + LGTM + unit tests pass + static analysis is good + (optional) the fucking thing compiles = oops I got your private key
(DIR) Post #B2aOEKXklY7chuRyS0 by soatok@furry.engineer
2026-01-23T15:27:48Z
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The security nerds haven't commented yet because this pattern-matches to way too many vulns to know which one I'm talking about yet
(DIR) Post #B2aOELqDwMUUjU6Esa by soatok@furry.engineer
2026-01-23T15:32:33Z
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A while ago, @SwiftOnSecurity started writing Decent Security, about personal computers and mobile device security.Appsec (writing secure software) is less friendly because everything you learned about programming becomes suspect.Why can't I just combine user data into this SQL query string if I'm careful enough? I know about Bobby Tables. I'll sanitize my inputs!!!Bam, SQL injection because integers can be used to reference column names in some injected queries.
(DIR) Post #B2aOEMyPjOdWFAwIHg by soatok@furry.engineer
2026-01-23T15:40:58Z
1 likes, 1 repeats
There's been a lot of "excitement" from business types about using LLMs to find vulnerabilities in source code. Naturally, the goal is to cheapen labor and extract more value for themselves. But I do suspect they're going to fall on their own sword with this one.Not every vulnerability is obvious. Something can look fine and be the Achilles' heel that wrecks your shit. Something can look incredibly dangerous but end up being a NOP.If people think their stochastic parrot can do a better job than humans, point them at OpenSSL or libgcrypt, and then have someone with relevant experience interrogate the "findings" before you waste the developers' time. I can guarantee almost everything they complain about will be a false positive with even the shallowest scrutiny.
(DIR) Post #B2aOEOQSKcf4kR4CdE by soatok@furry.engineer
2026-01-23T15:46:24Z
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There's another dimension to this.Attackers don't always choose the same targets that you think are highest value. Why attack your hardened authentication gateway when the marketing team has an unpatched WordPress 3.1 blog sitting right there talking to your production MySQL database?
(DIR) Post #B2aOEPtCtDFnHtWg5I by soatok@furry.engineer
2026-01-23T15:47:30Z
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Every time you talk seriously about security-in-practice you will find yourself circling around this point:https://infosec.exchange/@dymaxion/109344795644687902
(DIR) Post #B2aOER0KkCY4kHrspc by soatok@furry.engineer
2026-01-23T15:50:37Z
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On the topic of "political problems", sometimes you have attack vectors that nobody in the C-Suite considers an attack vector, like the FBI demanding the BitLocker disk encryption keys for Windows users.https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2026/01/22/microsoft-gave-fbi-keys-to-unlock-bitlocker-encrypted-data/Cryptographers have been complaining about this for decades. @matthew_d_green coined the term "Mud Puddle Test" to talk about it.https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2012/04/05/icloud-who-holds-key/
(DIR) Post #B2aOESUVDWH7M8zUUi by soatok@furry.engineer
2026-01-23T15:54:11Z
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While working on https://publickey.directory, two really annoying problems cropped up.What if someone demands their data be stricken from the transparency log, as is their right under the EU's GDPR?What if someone legitimately loses access to all their secret keys (catastrophic hardware failure) and wants their instance admin to be able to restore their ability to use E2EE?When I say "annoying problems", I do NOT mean the people that would experience them are annoying.I mean they are annoying because they are fundamentally incompatible with the simplest possible solution.
(DIR) Post #B2aOEXpbMV7hv1tuZk by soatok@furry.engineer
2026-01-23T15:59:28Z
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For the first issue, I wrote https://soatok.blog/2024/11/21/key-transparency-and-the-right-to-be-forgotten/ in 2024.It made the spec more complicated, but operators being able to run a command line script instead of dealing with lawyers is a win.For the second issue, which was documented in https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/tech/AccountRecoveryHardPKIProblem before I devised a solution, BurnDown + Fireproof were introduced to support a balanced approach.Power users (esp. the kinds of people governments would target, such as journalists, activists, and whistleblowers) can become immune to BurnDown. But if they lose their keys, they're SOL.Everyone else can recover access by having their instance admin issue a BurnDown and starting over with a fresh keypair.Passing the Mud Puddle Test was important to me, but being usable by real people who aren't 100% perfectly disciplined all the time is even more important.
(DIR) Post #B2aOEenNTAVHW9uja4 by soatok@furry.engineer
2026-01-23T16:12:01Z
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With respect to the @dymaxion toot I quote frequently:There are myriad political problems surrounding the development and adoption of cryptography tooling.Is this the right balance for everyone? Probably not. I anticipate someone will write an E2EE client someday that forces users to be Fireproof with PKDs (and refuses to chat with anyone that isn't), even to their own detriment, and some folks on Hacker News will cargo-cult that as the only secure client to use for E2EE on Fedi. And then I will have a headache to deal with.I also anticipate some governments considering using GDPR-like takedown demands to cover up their own crimes against their citizens. (Mitigating that might require operators having the sensibility to back up the keys they're shredding in their online service and have their lawyers hold onto it.)But at the end of the day, what I'm building are merely tools, not panaceas.
(DIR) Post #B2aOEkGH99aeTETNom by soatok@furry.engineer
2026-01-23T16:18:21Z
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Anyway, I'm going to log off fedi and get back to group therapy for abused programming languages work.If this pops off while I'm afk:Hi, I'm Soatok, a gay furry cryptography nerd. I blog at https://soatok.blog and once led a charge to fund a library because the local mayor is a bigot and wanted to illegally withhold their funding.