Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by lucian1900 5167 days ago
Except it uses crypto written in JavaScript, which is inherently broken.
1 comments
wwwtyro 5166 days ago
Isn't it fair to say, though, that all crypto is broken to some degree, and that javascript crypto lies somewhere on that that continuum? Surely AES with a 256 bit key that you've downloaded to your browser and can inspect is better than rot13?
link
lucian1900 5166 days ago
No, it's not fair to say that at all. The website can MITM you at any time, even without changing the crypto code it sends you.

Native crypto clients don't have this particular vulnerability.

link
wwwtyro 5165 days ago
> The website can MITM you at any time, even without changing the crypto code it sends you.

I am not following you. If they send you the code, can't you inspect it? And if you vet it, where's the concern for the MITM attack? You already have the code.

> Native crypto clients don't have this particular vulnerability.

Isn't it exactly the same? You have to download the code at some point.

link
lucian1900 5165 days ago
The website or any of the domains it includes JS from can at any time inject some JS into your page, which could maybe replace AES with Base64, or anything else it wished to do.

Native crypto clients don't arbitrarily download code from several domains every time you turn on your app.

link
lucian1900 5165 days ago
And I forgot to add, there's no way you can protect against other side-channel attacks like timing attacks. JS as it is today makes it impossible.
link
wwwtyro 5162 days ago
What keeps JS from protecting against timing attacks?

Even so, I would argue that it's fair to say that this pushes it along a continuum towards less secure, not that it is "broken".

link
wwwtyro 5162 days ago
Yeah, but you have the code. You could see if they were doing that.
link