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Thousands of private fotos leaked, privacy disaster for Quiptxt.com users

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Re: Thousands of private fotos leaked, privacy disaster for Quiptxt.com users

#41

Post by [deleted] »

gizmo wrote: post #19
swombat wrote: post #5

Lesson: If you launch something like QuipTxt, make it obvious to people that their images are public, so that the idiots who harbour the impression that stuff uploaded on a public URL on a free website don't come running at you with pitchforks. Additional benefit: more network effects. I don't really see the difference between this service and Twitpic (hard to tell since the site is down, though).

The users aren't the idiots here, they had no reason to assume their private pictures would be shared (and even if you put a disclaimer on there, you can't expect people to read that). Besides, the admins of the service must have been fully aware people were sharing sensitive pictures, and they did nothing about it! And it wasn't a public URL, it was a URL secured by a lousy hash. Virtually indistinguishable from a U…

[deleted]

Re: Thousands of private fotos leaked, privacy disaster for Quiptxt.com users

#42

Post by patio11 »

davidw wrote: post #23
cryptnoob wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. A password is not a magic spell. It's a set of letters and numbers that, if guessed correctly, will give me access to something you wanted kept private. An obfuscated URL is a set of letters and numbers that, if guessed correctly, will give me access to something you wanted kept private. Because one uses a MySQL database, and the other uses a file system, is irrelevant. They are functionally identical whe…

Locks on houses aren't infallible either, but establish intent: "you should not be here". Very short hashes don't do that quite so much.

I'd be interested in knowing what the length a hash needs to be to communicate "you should not attempt to circumvent this and post the nude pictures behind it", and also how secure a lock needs to be to communicate "you should not attempt to jimmy this with a credit card and post the nudie pictures behind it."

Re: Thousands of private fotos leaked, privacy disaster for Quiptxt.com users

#43

Post by patio11 »

jrockway wrote: post #31
cryptnoob wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just had google index my ajax directory. I have a directory where I keep ajax files. The only link to them is through my javascript ajax calls. I was pretty surprised that Google goes through your javascript, harvesting your ajax links.

Well, you linked to them via JavaScript. The whole rest of the Internet might not have been that careful, though.

Pardon my SEO: Google uses both heuristics and partial execution of Javascript these days. Linking to things only through JS is not a good method to prevent Googlebot from stumbling upon them. I only mention this because a lot of people I know think that apparently Google's colony of well-paid supergeniuses has not written anything since like 2004.

Re: Thousands of private fotos leaked, privacy disaster for Quiptxt.com users

#44

Post by davidw »

patio11 wrote: post #42
davidw wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Locks on houses aren't infallible either, but establish intent: "you should not be here". Very short hashes don't do that quite so much.

I'd be interested in knowing what the length a hash needs to be to communicate "you should not attempt to circumvent this and post the nude pictures behind it", and also how secure a lock needs to be to communicate "you should not attempt to jimmy this with a credit card and post the nudie pictures behind it."

Well, to tell the truth, if there's a 'lock', it's pretty obvious you shouldn't be doing it. If there's just a hash, it strikes me as simply a bad idea in the first place, no matter how long it is. Someone can just do 'copy image url' and have it work, with no challenge from the application. A shorter hash is especially bad because it makes them easy to guess at. I'm not saying it's "right" to copy images protected only with a hash, but it's like leaving an expensive bicycle unlocked on a college campus in the US - it's simply not very prudent. Of course in this case the users probably weren't aware of the problem, and the people who made the application are at fault.

Edit: like daleharvey says, the point is really that the hash simply happens to be difficult to find, whereas a proper application will challenge everyone who attempts to access the resource. For instance, say Alice looks at Bob's picture, and does "copy image url", and sends it to Carol. Carol has no way of knowing whether it's supposed to be private or not, since Alice didn't communicate that information.

Re: Thousands of private fotos leaked, privacy disaster for Quiptxt.com users

#45

Post by xsmasher »

cryptnoob wrote: post #17
daleharvey wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if you only need to guess something address to see it, it is public

I disagree. A password is not a magic spell. It's a set of letters and numbers that, if guessed correctly, will give me access to something you wanted kept private. An obfuscated URL is a set of letters and numbers that, if guessed correctly, will give me access to something you wanted kept private. Because one uses a MySQL database, and the other uses a file system, is irrelevant. They are functionally identical whe…

A password can usually be changed if compromised, and a password system usually contains measures to prevent brute-forcing; like cooldown times and a lockout after three guesses for example.

If you build those same measures into your URL then they have the same level of security; plus you can make your URL key a lot longer than would be comfortable for a password.

Re: Thousands of private fotos leaked, privacy disaster for Quiptxt.com users

#47

Post by jsz0 »

It's interesting how quickly the wolves jump on an easy target. Some of the comments on reddit and elsewhere I've read are talking about making throw-away Facebook accounts to confront/embarrass people with their private pictures. I've already seen a few names posted. I'm willing to cut people some slack for looking at the pictures (a harmless crime, human nature) but doing the leg work to connect anonymous pictures to a real identity to simply embarrass them is taking it way too far.

Re: Thousands of private fotos leaked, privacy disaster for Quiptxt.com users

#48

Post by brown9-2 »

frognibble wrote: post #3

The founder of the company responded on the Reddit thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/bjezp/massive_privacy_... The application is described in the iTunes store: http://itunes.apple.com/app/quip-free-photo-texting/id291358...

Really disingenuous how he frames it as a "security breach".

Re: Thousands of private fotos leaked, privacy disaster for Quiptxt.com users

#49

Post by jorgecastillo »

This is why you shouldn't sent or say over the internet anything that you wouldn't show your mother and why you should try to keep your private life separate from your internet live. If I was a user I would never again use this service. This wasn't even a security flaw it was plain incompetence as some redditors mentioned.

Re: Thousands of private fotos leaked, privacy disaster for Quiptxt.com users

#50

Post by _delirium »

roc wrote: post #34
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #6

Two things in this story that are not new, but still amazing to me. 1) A significant portion of people love taking pictures of themselves naked. This portion seems to be growing. 2) Another significant potion of people love publishing and making fun of people for whatever reason they can find. These people will dig through your trash, hack your servers, socially-engineer your passwords, etc. The more they can publicl…

RE point 1) That phones have put personal private cameras in more hands than even Polaroid certainly contributes. But I think a 30, 50 or 100% increase in cameras is nothing compared to the exponential increase in perfect digital copies and transfers of any given image. The evidence can no longer be counted on to get lost, get damaged, decay, etc - and it duplicates and multiplies as a default behavior at every step…

I think it also feels more informal/no-big-deal than with Polaroid: a cell-phone snapshot feels casual, while taking a naked picture with a Polaroid camera feels more like producing amateur porn.
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