It has everything to do with ActivityPub since if you follow that protocol strictly you will cause this behavior. It still doesn’t change that Dansup was told that this caused Bad Things™ and yet he didn’t follow normal procedure in how you handle it.
Vulnerabilities don’t need to be buffer overflows.
It has everything to do with ActivityPub since if you follow that protocol strictly you will cause this behavior.
Absolutely not. Which part of the spec? I linked up there to quite a thorough explanation of what the spec does and doesn’t dictate in this area, and how Mastodon chooses to behave in its implementation. What part of my explanation did I get wrong? Are they violating 5.1, 5.2, 7.1, some other part? How?
/cybersec researcher
I do not believe you. “I’m sending things out which need to be handled carefully in a protocol-nonstandard way by the recipient server software (which could be literally anything), or else my user’s private posts will be exposed. If someone talks about that situation and lets people know what’s going on, that’s irresponsible disclosure.”
If you actually are a cybersec researcher, you are bad at your job.
I’ve said nothing about any spec violation. That’s not relevant.
It has everything to do with ActivityPub since if you follow that protocol strictly you will cause this behavior.
That’s what I was going by. I guess I could re-read this now and interpret “this behavior” as Pixelfed’s side, instead of Mastodon’s side as I initially read it, and decide that you are agreeing with me that Mastodon’s behavior was (and is) out of spec? Do I have that right?
It still doesn’t change that Dansup was told that this caused Bad Things™ and yet he didn’t follow normal procedure in how you handle it.
It is normal procedure to fix a bug when you are notified about it.
The design flaw in Mastodon that managed to bite Pixelfed in this situation still exists. People were writing about it back in 2017 when this was all being first implemented. The idea that “normal procedure” needs to include keeping it a secret that Mastodon’s “private” statuses can be exposed by any server software that doesn’t handle them in the way that’s expected, is 100% wrong.
I’ll rephrase what I said earlier: Since you’re a security researcher, and you apparently think Dan should have played into the idea of keeping it a secret that Mastodon’s private statuses are not secret by obfuscating the information about how he was fixing Pixelfed to more effectively hide them, you are bad at your job. In this instance. The fault lies with how private statuses are implemented, and nothing about that needs to be kept secret as would a normal vulnerability, during responsible disclosure. In fact, it is extremely harmful to let users believe that these privacy settings are anything other than vague recommendations, specifically because of the risk they will act accordingly and expose some of their private posts to the world. They should know exactly what’s going on with it, and Dan accidentally failing to keep that a secret is in no way causing bad things.
You have absolutely no idea what “responsible” in “responsible disclosure” means :) It’s completely irrelevant how Mastodon has implemented private posts when it comes to how Dansup handled the issue, knowing what the effects were.
You don’t, when told of a vulnerability, handle it in a way that cause harm if it can be avoided.
Yeah, you said that stuff before and then you said it again. I do understand what your argument is here. I was trying a couple of different ways of explaining what I was saying in response, but it seems like it’s not working. Oh well.
It has everything to do with ActivityPub since if you follow that protocol strictly you will cause this behavior. It still doesn’t change that Dansup was told that this caused Bad Things™ and yet he didn’t follow normal procedure in how you handle it.
Vulnerabilities don’t need to be buffer overflows.
/cybersec researcher
Absolutely not. Which part of the spec? I linked up there to quite a thorough explanation of what the spec does and doesn’t dictate in this area, and how Mastodon chooses to behave in its implementation. What part of my explanation did I get wrong? Are they violating 5.1, 5.2, 7.1, some other part? How?
I do not believe you. “I’m sending things out which need to be handled carefully in a protocol-nonstandard way by the recipient server software (which could be literally anything), or else my user’s private posts will be exposed. If someone talks about that situation and lets people know what’s going on, that’s irresponsible disclosure.”
If you actually are a cybersec researcher, you are bad at your job.
hahahahaha
Watch and try again ;) I post under my real name.
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2024-44754
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbKLAjPYOEg
Feel free to post less and read more.
Okay. What part of the spec did Pixelfed violate? Where in the spec is Mastodon’s implementation of private posts justified?
Read more, post less. I’ve said nothing about any spec violation. That’s not relevant.
That’s what I was going by. I guess I could re-read this now and interpret “this behavior” as Pixelfed’s side, instead of Mastodon’s side as I initially read it, and decide that you are agreeing with me that Mastodon’s behavior was (and is) out of spec? Do I have that right?
It is normal procedure to fix a bug when you are notified about it.
The design flaw in Mastodon that managed to bite Pixelfed in this situation still exists. People were writing about it back in 2017 when this was all being first implemented. The idea that “normal procedure” needs to include keeping it a secret that Mastodon’s “private” statuses can be exposed by any server software that doesn’t handle them in the way that’s expected, is 100% wrong.
I’ll rephrase what I said earlier: Since you’re a security researcher, and you apparently think Dan should have played into the idea of keeping it a secret that Mastodon’s private statuses are not secret by obfuscating the information about how he was fixing Pixelfed to more effectively hide them, you are bad at your job. In this instance. The fault lies with how private statuses are implemented, and nothing about that needs to be kept secret as would a normal vulnerability, during responsible disclosure. In fact, it is extremely harmful to let users believe that these privacy settings are anything other than vague recommendations, specifically because of the risk they will act accordingly and expose some of their private posts to the world. They should know exactly what’s going on with it, and Dan accidentally failing to keep that a secret is in no way causing bad things.
You have absolutely no idea what “responsible” in “responsible disclosure” means :) It’s completely irrelevant how Mastodon has implemented private posts when it comes to how Dansup handled the issue, knowing what the effects were.
You don’t, when told of a vulnerability, handle it in a way that cause harm if it can be avoided.
Yeah, you said that stuff before and then you said it again. I do understand what your argument is here. I was trying a couple of different ways of explaining what I was saying in response, but it seems like it’s not working. Oh well.