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Why I Actively Discourage Online Tooling like jwt.io and Online JSON Validators

jvt.me

11–20 of 170 posts

Re: Why I Actively Discourage Online Tooling like jwt.io and Online JSON Validators

#11
post #8

If you never use production data for anything other than production this stops being a problem. You can put all the dev and staging JWTs you want in to jwt.io at no risk if those things aren't available to the outside world.

Agreed. This pretty much applies with any data & tool. If the data is extra sensitive, make extra sure the tool you are using is secure. If your data is for dev purposes only, the tool doesn't have to be validated as thoroughly.

Re: Why I Actively Discourage Online Tooling like jwt.io and Online JSON Validators

#12

I agree with the premise though its easy to validate if these tools are sending data to a remote dest with the network activity developer tool in any of the major browsers.

Sure, but to be sure you’d have to validate it every time, because the site’s content may have changed since your last visit. Do you?

No, you'd just have to validate it when you're inputting something particularly sensitive (and I really do usually look in the network console when I'm doing something like that)

Re: Why I Actively Discourage Online Tooling like jwt.io and Online JSON Validators

#13
I don't agree. I think online tools are great for quick-and-easy testing, and doesn't require any privacy issues. Mostly the benefit is ergonomics: I don't need to set up a bunch of stuff to do the thing I want, someone has done it because they had the exact same need.

The kind of thing I typically do with them:

- Diff two files

- Check brackets. JSON, jwt, that kind of thing

- Run code snippets in a fiddle site

- Regex

- Unit converters, HEX/decimal calculators

- Color pickers

In all cases, I'm using the tool before anything sensitive has been created. Why shouldn't I use a regex tool to figure out the exact string before I copy-paste it into my code? Or if I want to see if some particular little algorithm works, why not play around with it online, when an editor is already there and ready?

In any case, whatever I discover is part of a larger whole that was not set up in a way where this subproblem was going to be easy to test for, eg my particular use case may not make it easy to put a bunch of tests strings through regex.

Re: Why I Actively Discourage Online Tooling like jwt.io and Online JSON Validators

#15
For inspecting JWT tokens, I like the step command-line tool: https://smallstep.com/cli/

  pbpaste | step crypto jwt inspect --insecure
It can be combined further with jq if you need to dig out a specific field. (pbpaste is a macOS cli command that prints the contents of the clipboard)

Re: Why I Actively Discourage Online Tooling like jwt.io and Online JSON Validators

#17
post #6

But using google, slack, skype, gitlab, bitbucket... is fine to send sensitive data?

i hate how when I'm copying + pasting a url to a test or internal environment, to the browser address bar - I may have a typo in there, or an extra space. Bam! The URL just became a google search

Re: Why I Actively Discourage Online Tooling like jwt.io and Online JSON Validators

#18
For JWTs, I agree with this stance, since they are security credentials and therefore basically all of them are sensitive information.

I don't discourage online tooling in general. It's a risk/benefit trade-off---No, you shouldn't paste sensitive information into websites run by other people in general, but for non-sensive information where you don't care if the online tool is logging it or not, go for it. There are significant advantages to not having to roll your own for every single thing you need to do.

Carried to its extreme conclusion, "Don't use online tooling" implies "Don't read jvt.me," because who knows what that website is doing while vending you blog posts? clearly, you should roll your own solution by maintaining your own private collection of knowledge that you never share with anyone else. ;)

Re: Why I Actively Discourage Online Tooling like jwt.io and Online JSON Validators

#19

Webapps like jwt.io run locally in your browser and you can monitor traffic, prevent further requests or even run them yourself to make sure of this. This post is misinformed at best.

did you validate that those sites do not batch data input over time and send them out, much later than your direct user input interactions?
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