Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Is sending passwords a good use of JS crypto?

news.ycombinator.com

11–12 of 12 posts

Re: Ask HN: Is sending passwords a good use of JS crypto?

#11
post #2

First, have you read http://www.matasano.com/articles/javascript-cryptography/ ?

I hadn't yet seen that particular article but I'm very familiar with those arguments. Thanks for the link! I agree with them that building a crypto library in JS that can be trusted regardless of the security properties of the web application is impossible (content-controlled code, runtime malleability). However, I don't think those points mean that building an application that as a whole has good security properties…

It isn't clear that you are properly taking into account the fact that a browser (also known as a user-friendly Remote Code Execution Engine) is an especially hostile environment.

Re: Ask HN: Is sending passwords a good use of JS crypto?

#12
post #2

First, have you read http://www.matasano.com/articles/javascript-cryptography/ ?

I hadn't yet seen that particular article but I'm very familiar with those arguments. Thanks for the link! I agree with them that building a crypto library in JS that can be trusted regardless of the security properties of the web application is impossible (content-controlled code, runtime malleability). However, I don't think those points mean that building an application that as a whole has good security properties…

As you think about this, consider the impact that plugins, that your JS doesn't know about, and how they play with the entire runtime of the browser.

Also, I find this blog post somewhat less than amusing in general about how browsers work: http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/postxss/

Post reply on HN