[HN Gopher] Rookie coding mistake prior to Gab hack came from si...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Rookie coding mistake prior to Gab hack came from site's CTO
        
       Author : minimaxir
       Score  : 127 points
       Date   : 2021-03-02 19:50 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
        
       | GongOfFour wrote:
       | All of this query is safely accomplishable via composable query
       | building in AREL going back to Rails 4.2 (though it's much nice
       | in 5+). Silly stuff.
        
       | NotPavlovsDog wrote:
       | This leaves a bad taste as to what the "forensics" could uncover
       | just due to the open development model. It's nice to be the
       | prophet of evident mistakes when the trail is easy to follow,
       | even if you can't exactly master the lingo.
       | 
       | From the article:                  >The change, which in the
       | parlance of software development is known as a "git commit,"
       | 
       | It was a change. Parlance commit. Parlance, per tool used, "git
       | commit" (and then check as to tool standard parlance). My point
       | being, what do we routinely hide thanks to not coding in public?
       | What do engineers routinely hide, when possible?
       | 
       | I would rather, as an engineer, discuss core issues we can
       | fundamentally address: compromising on inadequate workflows
       | (including core architecture and paradigms), commitment to over-
       | delivery, and the ever-dooming deadlines. What victories of the
       | CTO went ignored, as part of "the job"?
       | 
       | It's nice to be smart when you have regular 8 hours of sleep.
       | I've had enough stress to remember just how idiotic many of my
       | decisions were, as a "leader". Most of them went ignored just
       | because we were covered by being invisible, by design. Morally, I
       | can't judge this CTO. If you look at your coding history, can
       | you?
        
         | bosswipe wrote:
         | I can 100% judge him. It is the CTO's job to put in place
         | processes and safeguards that reduce the possibility of one of
         | the most common widely known security vulnerabilities. Either
         | he didn't put in the safeguards or he bypassed them, either way
         | it's a fireable offense that put the whole business in danger.
        
           | NotPavlovsDog wrote:
           | Do you have your commit history available in a public
           | repository? I don't. Honestly, i'm paid for being a
           | professional fuck-up. I just fix things quickly and support
           | my team enough for us to bear the mutual guilt in silence.
        
             | spamizbad wrote:
             | There are SQL injection fuzzing tools that will have no
             | problem catching this. This is not the kind of security
             | defect that would depend on "white box" testing.
        
             | bosswipe wrote:
             | If you're suggesting that the obscurity of closed source
             | would have prevented the hack then I very much disagree.
             | There are countless examples of sql injection attacks in
             | closed source software.
        
               | NotPavlovsDog wrote:
               | I am commenting on the core foundation of the "article",
               | to quote:                  > "A quick review of Gab's
               | open source code shows that the critical vulnerability--
               | or at least one very much like it--was introduced by the
               | company's chief technology officer."
               | 
               | What would the writer have without the open source?
        
               | bosswipe wrote:
               | Ok that's true. With a closed source process the company
               | gets to more carefully control the narrative. That might
               | be better for the company and for protecting reputations,
               | but it's not better for the public at large.
        
               | NotPavlovsDog wrote:
               | Further, with a closed model, one can always peruse the
               | emergency clause, force majeure, the ever popular "state
               | actor".
               | 
               | "Independent experts indicate (fee undisclosed), a
               | powerful malevolent actor was involved in the recent
               | malicious attack on our infrastructure. This aligns with
               | the recent series of threats identified by the State
               | Department and other US government agencies as enemy
               | state activity to undermine Democracy! They hate our
               | Freedom!"
        
           | cwhiz wrote:
           | The CTO has only been there since November. No idea what type
           | of situation he or she may have inherited.
           | 
           | However, it looks like the CTO pushed this directly, no PR.
        
         | minimaxir wrote:
         | There's a difference between commiting hacky-but-working code
         | during an Agile sprint and commiting code that allows
         | unsanitized input to a SQL query.
        
           | NotPavlovsDog wrote:
           | Yes, but then, really, the fundamental popular software
           | paradigm is not just unsanitized but unsanitary. The models
           | for sanitary-by-design are there. It's just math.
           | The core leadership behind inadequate decisions, often above
           | the CTO, are frequently of the "don't care about the math,
           | just the numbers" type.
           | 
           | Perhaps the CTO raised concerns. Maybe, not. But if we want
           | an open engineering culture in software, unlike "applied
           | engineering" in other industries, we should actively oppose
           | punishing those that embrace open-to-peer-review models, even
           | when the openness backfires and the history gets removed by
           | the open workflow participants.
           | 
           | We may still have a fragile and unique culture in software,
           | that perhaps contradicts past history such as engineering in
           | construction (look up "corruption construction") or the
           | unique corruption of medicine ("sugar lobby", "food
           | pyramid").
           | 
           | Despite bad decisions and the fumbled cover-up, the attempt
           | to perform in public on their part is valuable to me. We
           | don't have easy access to which of the doctors took money to
           | publish "research" that "calories are the same", pushing for
           | more carbohydrates in diets. This may translate to multiple
           | people, people you might personally know, dying of diabetes.
           | 
           | With open software, we get the names. This should not reward
           | click-bait media witch-hunting.
        
         | an_opabinia wrote:
         | > commitment to over-delivery, and the ever-dooming deadlines.
         | 
         | Surely the difficulty in recruiting people to work for their
         | shitty website with shitty politics should illuminate for you
         | and everyone also in denial that politics is also engineering.
        
       | Lukas_Skywalker wrote:
       | > ,, Specifically, line 23 strips the code of "reject" and
       | "filter," which are API functions that implement a programming
       | idiom that protects against SQL injection attacks."
       | 
       | This is not correct. The mistake was to use ,find_by_sql' without
       | parametrizing the query. The mentioned reject and filter methods
       | are merely skipping some of the data the query returns.
        
         | Delk wrote:
         | The previous code that used those functions probably did
         | prevent a SQL injection as a side effect, as using them avoided
         | making a direct SQL query at all.
         | 
         | But you're of course correct that it's not the replacement of
         | an ORM call with SQL that's the problem.
        
       | orblivion wrote:
       | No surprise to me. At one point when they had an API, I could
       | follow and see posts from "locked" accounts that I couldn't see
       | from the website. I reported it and they said something like "oh
       | yeah we're making a lot of changes right now" and of course never
       | fixed it (until they decommed their API which effectively fixes
       | it).
       | 
       | They're up against the world, and they're spreading themselves
       | _very_ thin, aiming to replace all of the  "big tech" use cases,
       | for better or for worse. They hate Silicon Valley but they "move
       | fast and break things" more than anybody, arguably by necessity.
       | I'll cut them some slack if their public platforms have some
       | bugs, but they shouldn't do anything with sensitive user data.
        
         | yrgulation wrote:
         | The cto should focus on strategic thinking and have one or two
         | devs that lead daily work - and code review for such basic
         | issues (or use a code analyser) to detect sql, xss, xsrf,
         | session management, password based user data encryption,
         | message encryption, and other trivialities. Not that i like
         | gab, but i wonder how many rookie mistakes like this one are
         | then blamed on "foreign agents" and other media bollox.
        
           | claytongulick wrote:
           | I'm of the general mindset that the CTO should be the most
           | technical.
           | 
           | I think we see a lot of tech company failures when the CTO is
           | just a manager type that doesn't understand the technology
           | and doesn't have the ability to contribute to it.
        
           | yikesshescute wrote:
           | > The cto should focus on strategic thinking and have one or
           | two devs that lead daily work
           | 
           | Your comment is complete nonsense. With good reasons
           | (personnel, external demands, goals), the working dynamic
           | varies widely from company to company. Presumably, you've
           | never worked there and don't have any clue why they were
           | structured as such. You're just repeating crap you've seen
           | other people write about CTOs.
           | 
           | > Not that i like gab, but i wonder how many rookie mistakes
           | like this one are then blamed on "foreign agents" and other
           | media bollox.
           | 
           | And I'm not defending someone else's coding mistakes, too
           | busy worrying about my own.
           | 
           | > (or use a code analyser)
           | 
           | Also, lol, you might as well have said "or use voodoo".
        
           | gkoberger wrote:
           | You're right in general, however I think you're over-
           | estimating the size of Gab.
           | 
           | In this case, it's more of a "everyone gets a CxO title
           | because there's fewer than 26 of us" type thing.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | federona wrote:
         | With cancel culture security of all personal and public
         | communication is now a matter of making a living. Especially in
         | this domain. This is a fact, if you wish it censored you are a
         | liar.
        
           | orblivion wrote:
           | I can't quite parse exactly what your point is, but if people
           | want to communicate securely they should use Signal or
           | something.
        
             | federona wrote:
             | My point is that if someone hacks and steals all the data
             | on your social media site then they can expose random
             | people by doing analysis on the site's data and make
             | individuals lose their job. Whether that is something good
             | or bad depends on your point of view. Should the
             | consequences of having opinions against mainstream views
             | and venting about them in public make you liable for those
             | views to your employer? Sometimes the venting is honestly
             | stating your feeling about the subject which causes gasps,
             | the firing of the recent Mandalorian star comes to mind.
        
               | 8note wrote:
               | The Disney example doesn't really square?
               | 
               | She posted in public purposefully, and under her own
               | name, whilst having a job where she's representing Disney
               | with her name
               | 
               | That's a very different case from some private individual
               | speaking privately in a situation where they don't
               | represent their employer
               | 
               | For a more generic case, during your interview, you tell
               | your prospective employer that you agree with their
               | values and want to work together, then after getting
               | hired, you tell them you disagree with their values.
               | Should they still have to work with you?
               | 
               | Eg. You become a teacher at a Catholic school, but you
               | only pretended to be a Catholic in the interview
        
               | federona wrote:
               | What are corporate values? The only thing you are
               | legitimately saying to your employer is you pay me and I
               | do the work and we both make money. That is all. Anything
               | more than that infringes on your personal rights outside
               | of your employment, as these comments are my own. The
               | fact that we have the reach of corporations way outside
               | of work in public life is not right in my opinion, it's
               | akin to slavery. This corporation employs people with
               | these sorts of thoughts??? That does not really register
               | in my mind as any sort of sound reasoning for dismissal,
               | for having the wrong thoughts and saying them in public.
        
               | andrewzah wrote:
               | There is no right to a job. There is no right to immunity
               | from consequences from saying things online. The end.
               | 
               | If you don't like how Disney operates, then vote with
               | your wallet. That's literally the only thing companies
               | care about, and is the only reason why she was let go in
               | the first place.
               | 
               | Saying we should force companies to retain hires despite
               | what they say online, is ridiculous.
        
               | federona wrote:
               | If you were to make a general rule, it's saying if you
               | want employment then don't say anything online, period.
               | So it is in fact depriving any employee the right to
               | speak about things publicly all the time. It's like
               | putting a muzzle on a dog so he does not bark. If that's
               | not slavery I don't know what is.
               | 
               | As for right to employment, well how far can you push it.
               | And how does that not violate white privilege principles
               | or corporate privilege principles. We have a corporate
               | class which holds most of the wealth and if you say
               | anything you will lose the right to make a living. That
               | smacks of privilege, in fact white privilege.
               | 
               | Only the corporate class may speak. It's not sound in any
               | way.
        
               | andrewzah wrote:
               | You are always free to choose another employer. She
               | literally already found work with another employer.
               | 
               | If enough people speak with their wallets, then disney
               | will follow that. It's really that simple.
               | 
               | You are suggesting that corporations are one monolithic
               | entity, which is simply not true.
               | 
               | I have no idea what you mean here by white privilege or
               | corporate privilege. Nobody has the right to a job.
               | Saying dumb things online and getting consequences is
               | applicable to everyone, because corporations only follow
               | the money.
        
               | kstrauser wrote:
               | Yes, absolutely, some of those views should cost you your
               | job. I don't want to work with people who want to
               | eradicate Jews, or think black people are subhuman, or
               | believe women are beneath men. If I found out someone on
               | my team held those beliefs, I would definitely act to
               | remove them. That's just not compatible with the type of
               | environment I try to create at work.
               | 
               | I haven't seen a single example of someone who was fired
               | because it turned out that they were a fan of trickle-
               | down economics or opposed Obamacare. Those aren't the
               | kind of opinions people are being "oppressed" (insert
               | eyeroll here) for.
        
               | orblivion wrote:
               | Should these people go broke and starve to death? Or is
               | there a class of job they should be allowed to work?
        
               | badRNG wrote:
               | I do think the moderate conservatives to have a little
               | bit of work to do as far as political theory goes in this
               | area, specifically the synthesis of the positions
               | "companies should not be allowed to fire employees for
               | far-right beliefs" and "companies should be able to hire
               | and fire employees for _nearly_ any reason* and at any
               | time. "
               | 
               | *save for a Civil Rights Act violation, which is usually
               | recognized as a harm across the board
        
               | ryguytilidie wrote:
               | "why on earth should my actions have consequences!?!?
               | this is cancel culture" is easily the most disingenuous
               | cringe thing in the last year, and that is saying a lot.
        
               | andrewzah wrote:
               | Anything and everything is apparently cancel culture now.
               | There are no "consequences" anymore, it's all just
               | "cancel culture".
               | 
               | This phenomenon is not new to humanity. There is no
               | immunity from the consequences that can occur from saying
               | things online. If one doesn't like Disney's behavior,
               | then I suggest speaking with one's wallet.
        
               | federona wrote:
               | Exactly. Especially when your actions are your own right
               | to say what you think. It's akin to blasphemy and the
               | problem is that the doctrine that you are violating has
               | not been taught to anyone for them to even know that you
               | are not allowed to say that.
        
       | nicoffeine wrote:
       | > Gab had long provided commits at https://code.gab.com/. Then,
       | on Monday, the site suddenly removed all commits--including the
       | ones that created and then fixed the critical SQL injection
       | vulnerability. In their place, Gab provided source code in the
       | form of a Zip archive file that was protected by the password
       | "JesusChristIsKingTrumpWonTheElection" (minus the quotation
       | marks).
       | 
       | Hopefully this eliminates any doubt on Gab's real mission. It
       | isn't free speech.
        
         | eznzt wrote:
         | I don't understand how someone removing the contents they
         | themselves posted goes against free speech?
        
           | Malp wrote:
           | I believe the parent is commenting on the archive's password
           | and where the company leans ideologically
        
         | kevingadd wrote:
         | It is always interesting when people complaining about having
         | their speech suppressed turn out to hold (in the former case)
         | extremely orthodox, standard views or (in the latter case)
         | fairly common views, instead of obscure or actively unpopular
         | points of view. (I'd certainly appreciate it if the latter
         | weren't common, but it polls shockingly well in the US right
         | now)
        
       | mmastrac wrote:
       | Is their source tree under AGPL3? From a mirrored copy of what
       | purports to be a clone from before it was pulled down.
       | 
       | https://git.rip/gab/gab-social/-/blob/develop/LICENSE
       | 
       | This will make things interesting for them going forward.
        
       | yrgulation wrote:
       | Ok so if in 2021 a "cto" or developer, let alone former facebook
       | developer, doesn't use bound and escaped parameters as a minimum
       | then that developer needs to take a break and catch up on things.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
       | On a related note, I've become a gigantic fan of Slonik,
       | https://github.com/gajus/slonik, which simultaneously (a) makes
       | it extremely difficult to expose SQL injection attacks while (b)
       | still letting you write SQL in a very "natural" way using
       | template literals.
       | 
       | It takes advantage of a somewhat-not-well-known feature of
       | Javascript template literals in that you can apply functions to
       | them, e.g. sql`SELECT foo FROM bar WHERE id =
       | ${userEnteredValue}`. No need to manually escape
       | userEnteredValue, the sql template literal function does it for
       | you.
        
       | wwww4all wrote:
       | Look up gell-mann amnesia effect. The article doesn't know much
       | about OWASP practices.
       | 
       | SQL injection bugs are not rookie mistakes, it's prevalent in
       | many current and future applications. Look into Vtech sql
       | injection hack, a large company with lots of resources had
       | similar bug.
       | 
       | Look at previous hacks, solar winds hack, Sony hack, were all
       | preventable common hacks.
        
         | outworlder wrote:
         | > a large company with lots of resources had similar bug.
         | 
         | Large companies are even more likely to run into this sort of
         | issue.
         | 
         | It's still a rookie mistake. Any given well established company
         | will contain a large number of 'rookies'. It's up to the
         | company and everyone involved to make sure these are caught
         | before going into production.
        
         | jahabrewer wrote:
         | A mistake can be both "rookie" and widely prevalent. That's
         | exactly how I'd describe SQL injection.
        
         | rsynnott wrote:
         | > SQL injection bugs are not rookie mistakes
         | 
         | SQL injection bugs of this fairly trivial type are. This is
         | literally what web tutorials were pleading with PHP developers
         | not to do 20 years ago, and they weren't new then.
        
         | xtracto wrote:
         | You would be amazed at the number of "developers" that have no
         | idea what an SQL injection is when I ask them as part of my
         | Full Stack developer interview.
        
       | tomc1985 wrote:
       | > "Sadly Rails documentation doesn't warn you about this pitfall,
       | [...]" said Dmitry Borodaenko, a former production engineer at
       | Facebook who brought the commit to my attention wrote in an
       | email.
       | 
       | This is completely and utterly untrue.
       | 
       | https://guides.rubyonrails.org/security.html#sql-injection shows
       | examples that are _exactly_ like the code in question in that
       | commit
       | 
       | Bound parameters were a new thing like 15 years ago.
        
         | btilly wrote:
         | _Bound parameters were a new thing like 15 years ago._
         | 
         | When they were new depends on what language and database
         | library you use.
         | 
         | Perl's DBI had them 25 years ago.
        
           | AdamN wrote:
           | Dear lord I'm getting old ... :-)
        
         | FanaHOVA wrote:
         | It's like Twitter calling Rails LEGO because they weren't able
         | to scale it :)
        
         | kstrauser wrote:
         | Maybe they were new 15 years ago in Rails, but I was using them
         | in Perl in the mid-90s.
         | 
         | There is _no_ excuse for writing an SQL injection in 2021.
         | Zero. None. And if you 're in the position to write code
         | that'll be deployed to production, you darn well better have it
         | reviewed by peers before it's merged.
         | 
         | If the CTO did this and worked around the developers, he's a
         | freaking idiot. If the engineers saw this and signed off
         | because he's the CTO, they're freaking idiots. I wouldn't
         | ordinarily be this harsh about it, but come on. SQL injections
         | in 2021? That's astoundingly bad.
        
           | rsynnott wrote:
           | > Maybe they were new 15 years ago in Rails
           | 
           | That's when Rails came out :)
           | 
           | I'm fairly sure ActiveRecord has always supported them.
        
           | dragonwriter wrote:
           | > Maybe they were new 15 years ago in Rails,
           | 
           | Well, Rails was < 2 years old then, so _everything_ was new
           | in Rails.
        
       | stickfigure wrote:
       | > Developers: Sanitize user input
       | 
       | No, don't sanitize user input. Don't _trust_ it, which is a big
       | difference. Use bound parameters and this problem goes away.
        
         | acdha wrote:
         | A better answer is both not trusting it and validating it:
         | parameters prevent data from being interpreted as code but
         | validation is also important because allowing unexpected inputs
         | could lead to other vulnerabilities (e.g. XSS in an error
         | message or a partially-generated page) or complications when
         | making changes in the future if you learn that common clients
         | have come to rely on your sanitization logic cleaning up their
         | requests.
        
       | abvdasker wrote:
       | This is bad code and it's a little surprising to me that a former
       | Facebook engineer wrote it (and subsequently became the CTO).
       | 
       | It's been a while since I wrote any Rails but the offenses that
       | jump out just from a cursory inspection:
       | 
       | - large raw SQL query which could almost certainly be
       | accomplished in a more idiomatic way with AREL or ActiveRecord
       | 
       | - no user input sanitizing
       | 
       | - using a regular string literal for a large text block instead
       | of a Ruby here document
       | 
       | - leaving a mess of commented-out code at the bottom of the
       | method
       | 
       | Apparently Gab isn't exactly hiring the best and brightest.
        
       | forgotmypw17 wrote:
       | I've been pretty sure for a while that Parler and Gab were both
       | honeypots. This makes it seem even more likely.
        
         | McGlockenshire wrote:
         | Never attribute to malice that which can equally be explained
         | by incompetence, or something like that.
        
           | adolph wrote:
           | Never assume xor among different interpretations.
        
           | forgotmypw17 wrote:
           | .
        
             | McGlockenshire wrote:
             | I think you're encountering Poe's Law here - at some point
             | it becomes difficult to tell the difference between a troll
             | and someone genuinely expressing an extremist point of
             | view.
             | 
             | Are there trolls on Gab and Parler? For sure. Are there
             | purestrain rabid culture warriors on Gab and Parler? Yup.
             | Are Gab and Parler honeypots? I don't think so, but that
             | also depends how you define "honeypot."
             | 
             | Both exist because other social networks cracked down on
             | distasteful content. Gab erupted during the era of cracking
             | down on ethnonationalists and is full of wannabe nazis and
             | 4chan-grown edgelords. Parler erupted during the era of
             | cracking down on dangerous misinformation (QAnon, COVID
             | denialism, the things that we now know lead to election
             | denialism, etc etc) and if full of people that choose to
             | believe that nonsense rather than reality. Parler was also
             | signal boosted by political voices that intentionally
             | framed crackdowns on distasteful content as an aspect of
             | the ongoing culture war.
             | 
             | Both _naturally_ courted their respective audiences.
             | 
             | The guy running Gab is a True Believer. Check out Gab's
             | Twitter (heh) for some pretty questionable recent posts
             | that blame the hack on "mentally ill trans hackers," only
             | with a slur instead of trans, because of course there's a
             | slur.
             | 
             | The Mercer family bankrolls Parler. They have a long
             | history of throwing money at causes that follow their
             | political viewpoints. We don't have a reason to doubt that
             | their board and and management are True Believers in their
             | own cause as well.
             | 
             | So, is it really a honeypot if it's honest by design?
        
               | new_guy wrote:
               | >The guy running Gab is a True Believer
               | 
               | He's definitely not but he knows how to play to his
               | audience. Instead of owning it and saying 'we messed up'
               | it's easier to blame the 'mentally ill trans hackers'!
               | 
               | But the 'hack' was almost certainly intentional, it's the
               | exact same play Parler did a few weeks ago. They're both
               | honeypots, this is the easiest way to get the data out
               | there.
        
             | firebaze wrote:
             | Maybe they are spinoffs of reddit/facebook/twitter etc. to
             | contain moderation cost :)
        
             | cmeacham98 wrote:
             | > My opinion is that it's more likely than not that these
             | sites are little more than honeypots to troll the gullible
             | into making asses of themselves so that we have another
             | subject for our Two Minutes of Hate.
             | 
             | Or maybe, instead, some people really do hold extremist
             | views and post them on the internet? I don't understand
             | your theory here - the majority of Gab content is public
             | already (well, behind an authwall, but otherwise public).
             | The hack achieves nothing for these masterminds that just
             | want to make fun of people being bigoted on the internet
             | because they already could.
             | 
             | > Now that data can be used against the most ferverent
             | Republican supporters and there's no one to blame,
             | officially, because they were "hacked". Oops! Maybe you
             | should think twice before publicly supporting Republicans
             | online, I guess!
             | 
             | Do you seriously think the problem people had with some of
             | the content on Gab is that users were "supporting
             | Republicans"????
             | 
             | GP has edited their comment like 10 times so here's the
             | version I'm replying to:
             | 
             | > I'm one of the world's biggest fans of Hanlon's razor,
             | and I've done so much damage to it with Gab and Parler that
             | it looks like a hairbrush now.
             | 
             | > My opinion is that it's more likely than not that these
             | sites are little more than honeypots to troll the gullible
             | into making asses of themselves so that we have another
             | subject for our Two Minutes of Hate.
             | 
             | > I do a lot of research on social media mechanics, and
             | I've used both of them. I can't quite put my finger on it,
             | but they performed and felt differently from any other
             | sites I've used over the past 20+ years. For one thing, you
             | could not read or see ANY comments without registering
             | first.
             | 
             | > I could just as easily be imagining it, of course. And
             | they did paint a huge target on themselves. But they also
             | made it easy to steal the data.
             | 
             | > Now that data can be used against the most ferverent
             | Republican supporters and there's no one to blame,
             | officially, because they were "hacked". Oops! Maybe you
             | should think twice before publicly supporting Republicans
             | online, I guess!
             | 
             | > (Not affiliated with any political party, apolitical,
             | have friends and family who are into all different flavors.
             | Just think it's fucked up to throw thousands of people
             | under the bus like that, if it's true.)
        
             | hddu wrote:
             | I do like your theory that it was a honeypot from the left
             | created to produce people to attack.
             | 
             | I would be surprised if our intelligence agencies and law
             | enforcement didn't have a role in creating/running
             | extremist sites. Seeing as the FBI likes to run child porn
             | sites and infiltrate political groups that could cause
             | instability, they are the most obvious perpetrators.
        
               | endymi0n wrote:
               | Occam's razor would disagree. While it's certainly
               | thinkable that it's a honeypot of the FBI, set up from
               | the left (just like it's possible that it was Antifa who
               | stormed the capitol posing as Trump supporters), it's far
               | more likely this was a job done by nutjobs, for nutjobs.
               | 
               | If you also think the earth is flat or the election was
               | stolen despite literal mountains of evidence, how are you
               | supposed to properly weigh any other rational evidence
               | like the existence of SQL injections?
        
               | orblivion wrote:
               | FWIW Gab very proudly proclaims that they report things
               | to law enforcement if they cross a legal line. I could be
               | wrong but I would think that if the FBI was trying to
               | entrap people they would not want to give such a warning.
        
               | neltnerb wrote:
               | I think you are wrong, stating it prominently and
               | repeatedly makes the warning disappear into noise for
               | users so there's little downside and a lot of upside if
               | it were in fact being operated by the FBI.
               | 
               | I doubt it is though, I don't think the FBI has the
               | capability to be frank, but even more if the FBI were
               | operating it as a honeypot somehow I doubt that the
               | websites would have been banned from AWS and such.
               | 
               | I'm sure that if it were true the FBI could have easily
               | just told AWS that the presence of extremist content was
               | being allowed by law enforcement specifically to identify
               | terrorists.
               | 
               | I think the idea that it's a honeypot is a very poor fit
               | to the available information.
        
               | wrycoder wrote:
               | The leader of the supposedly white supremecist Proud
               | Boys, Enrique Tarrio, is an Afro-Cuban who turned out to
               | be an FBI informer.
               | 
               | Wheels within wheels.
               | 
               | https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/27/proud-
               | boys-l...
        
         | GVIrish wrote:
         | Or maybe they just didn't build a strong enough engineering
         | team and quickly ran into the limits of their experience and
         | skills levels.
         | 
         | There are numerous examples of start ups and even mature
         | companies making basic mistakes. This is easily explainable
         | without resorting to conspiracy theories.
        
           | btmcnellis wrote:
           | "solarwinds123" comes to mind.
        
           | eternalban wrote:
           | > maybe they just didn't build a strong enough engineering
           | team and quickly ran into the limits of their experience and
           | skills levels.
           | 
           | "Free Speech platform Gab has announced Fosco Marotto as the
           | company's new Chief Technical Officer (CTO). According to a
           | blog post from the company, Marotto was formerly a software
           | engineer, production engineer, and developer advocate during
           | a seven-year career at Facebook.
           | 
           | Marotto reportedly brings 23 years of industry experience to
           | the platform along with extensive knowledge in backend
           | infrastructure and insight that will help Gab scale as it
           | becomes increasingly popular."
           | 
           | CTO: https://github.com/gfosco
           | 
           | Parse Server: https://github.com/parse-community/parse-server
           | 
           | Parse Server API doc snippet:
           | 
           | "If your app is compromised, it's not only you as the
           | developer who suffers, but potentially the users of your app
           | as well. Continue reading for our suggestions for sensible
           | defaults and precautions to take before releasing your app
           | into the wild."
           | 
           | https://docs.parseplatform.org/rest/guide/#security
           | 
           | Per Ars, he _removed_ security code.
        
             | rsynnott wrote:
             | I mean, "worked at Facebook for a while" isn't a guarantee
             | of competence. And some security boilerplate text isn't a
             | guarantee of being good at security.
        
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