Earlier quoted context omitted.
(I'm an EM at Plus) It's a bit complex, and not quite perfect, but I'm pretty happy with what we've done so far. The first method is by looking at the HTTP status codes. Since we're running a full browser on our side, we can tell if the status codes that returned are different than the initial capture. We also have been training an image classification model on pictures of log-in screens — this has worked surprisingl…
Ok but once it's recognised a login screen, what does it do? And presumably you can't use this for sites that require frequent MFA...
Show HN: Plus – Self-updating screenshots
61–70 of 126 posts
Re: Show HN: Plus – Self-updating screenshots
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is it all that much more a risk than taking a screenshot, putting it on cloud storage like OneDrive/GDrive, and sharing with a "anyone who has the link" permission? B/c I feel like that is super common and kind of impossible to stop with a permissions approach.
My guess is this works by uploading your browser's data (cookies, local storage, etc.) to Plus so that it can retake the screenshot with a headless browser even if the web page requires authentication. So if someone hacks Plus or if some employee goes rogue, they can potentially access any web app you are taking screenshots of. In other words, if Plus becomes popular, its database will become a prime target for hacke…
What this means is that (whether now, or with an update that could easily slip the notice of Chrome Web Store auditors) Plus could direct your browser to take these actions on a domain where you had never explicitly told it to take a screenshot, using not only the credentials from when you installed Plus but whatever credentials exist on an ongoing basis.
Of course, this is also true of any extension that you grant permission to access all websites. But Plus has already shipped the code to access the DOM of arbitrary tabs already loaded in everyone's browser, and communicate that information to the cloud, without an auditable open-source core. I have a lot of trust, for instance, that if uBlock Origin were to start sending my data to the cloud, someone would post about it on HN. An attacker with the ability to send updates to the Chrome Web Store as Plus, and operate Plus servers as command-and-control servers, could do this a lot more subtly, and that's definitely a yellow flag.
Re: Show HN: Plus – Self-updating screenshots
#63This seems identical to the live screenshots you can add to an easel in the Arc browser [1]. I've created a view with that that shows a collection of different analytics sites, that all update automatically. Only downside is that occasionally you have to login to keep those views up to date. [1] https://youtu.be/ukquBSOpmTk?t=290
Arc browser https://arc.net/
Re: Show HN: Plus – Self-updating screenshots
#64This looks really cool and clever. I do have a question about security though. The FAQ states: > Today, we encrypt all sensitive data on your computer before it is sent to our servers, your data is encrypted in transit and at rest. Our employees do not have access to the private key to decrypt sensitive data. I wonder how this works. I assume Plus works by storing the cookies present in the user's browser so that it…
I assume they mean by default, employees do not have access to the KMS key necessary to decrypt the sensitive data. (They mention using an individual KMS key per customer) I suspect there must be a handful of SREs who, who could access it if they really wanted to - though that access would still be logged in cloudtrail.
Personally, I think we could do a better job explaining our security model in our FAQ. I'll bring it up with the team.
Re: Show HN: Plus – Self-updating screenshots
#65Re: Show HN: Plus – Self-updating screenshots
#66This seems like a spectacular way to break permissions restrictions and escape data to non-authorized entities. If it's successful, it's the sort of thing that will be brutally blocked by IT all over the place. Very slick, though.
(I'm an EM at Plus) Yeah, we think about the permissions/data escape a lot. I'm glad to see others are commenting with scrutiny too. We've put a lot of effort into our security model, since we know that we're handling very sensitive data. To give a bit of a peek in: All of the session data we store is encrypted with a key unique to each organization, managed through AWS KMS. We've also built a fully event driven arch…
Re: Show HN: Plus – Self-updating screenshots
#67I worked for a personalization vendor a few years ago and was on an engineering team that built a feature like this. It was ... a major headache, and I don't think anyone was ever completely comfortable with the security implications. So I wish the team good luck, and especially with issues like: * A/B testing. How can you ensure that what your clients are seeing is the same thing you are seeing? Maybe you've been as…
Re: Show HN: Plus – Self-updating screenshots
#68Re: Show HN: Plus – Self-updating screenshots
#69Any plans to actually scrape the data instead of just the images? Having the actual data saved in a tabular format would really make this a killer product... You could probably do this by finding the elements within your selection and parsing the rendered HTML. Images are great but for doing anything more complex than just viewing charts scraping the data would be a huge plus
Re: Show HN: Plus – Self-updating screenshots
#70This is so clever. Love it. Would love a version that just runs locally without sending things to the cloud.
The Arc browser has something like this with their Capture + Easels feature (example of this post: https://arc.net/e/A6D1FE0C-063A-4500-8D19-46581D16181E ), and it supposedly does update. Truth be told, I have no clue how the live-updating feature works when I share an Easel but it does capture the page as I see it Edit: It does change on my local "Easel" almost instantly with my reply, but we'll see if that screensh…