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FOKS: Federated Open Key Service

foks.pub

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Re: FOKS: Federated Open Key Service

#11

Post by dannyobrien »

maxtaco wrote: post #2

Max here, author of FOKS. I find it interesting how much glue is required to perform basic cryptographic operations, even in 2025. Imagine a very simple idea like encrypting a secret with a YubiKey. If it's an important secret, that you really don't want to lose, then now you need a second YubiKey as a backup, in case the primary is lost or breaks. But now how do you encrypt and how do you rotate the primary out if n…

Max! I'm so happy that you're doing this! I was a huge fan of Keybase, and have spent the last few years praying (and sometimes brainstorming funding) a decentralized, open source version of it. Looking forward to digging into the details of FOKS, but just wanted to say thank you and the Keybase team for all you've done -- including keeping Keybase going after the Zoom purchase.

Re: FOKS: Federated Open Key Service

#13

Post by pzduniak »

marcopolo wrote: post #10

The fact that this already has git support is amazing. I can easily migrate my Keybase git repos with a single command.

I used to use Keybase Git repos for file-based secrets management for my toy DevOps project. Either FOKS Git repos or native support in SOPS would be pretty damn cool!

Re: FOKS: Federated Open Key Service

#15

Post by pmw »

maxtaco wrote: post #2

Max here, author of FOKS. I find it interesting how much glue is required to perform basic cryptographic operations, even in 2025. Imagine a very simple idea like encrypting a secret with a YubiKey. If it's an important secret, that you really don't want to lose, then now you need a second YubiKey as a backup, in case the primary is lost or breaks. But now how do you encrypt and how do you rotate the primary out if n…

Max, this looks interesting and I'd like to follow the blog. Would you please add an Atom feed to the blog?

Re: FOKS: Federated Open Key Service

#16

Post by kstrauser »

hofrogs wrote: post #12

[flagged]

And in reality, someone making a personal project used a tool at their disposal to add pretty pictures to their website, said website not being a part of the project in any way.

If they vibe coded the app, sure, be skeptical. But there's no indication they did, just that they wanted images for their website, and they're a software engineer and not a graphics designer.

I put about as much weight in the origin of those graphics as which website editor they use. If they were advertising themselves as a web designer, sure, maybe that's relevant. That's not what they're doing here though.

Re: FOKS: Federated Open Key Service

#18

Post by hofrogs »

kstrauser wrote: post #16
hofrogs wrote: post #12

[flagged]

And in reality, someone making a personal project used a tool at their disposal to add pretty pictures to their website, said website not being a part of the project in any way. If they vibe coded the app, sure, be skeptical. But there's no indication they did, just that they wanted images for their website, and they're a software engineer and not a graphics designer. I put about as much weight in the origin of those…

Not having any pictures at all is better than having AI pictures, in my opinion

Re: FOKS: Federated Open Key Service

#19

Post by pmw »

To better wrap my head around how FOKS facilitates team collaboration, I'd like to see two comparisons:

1) compare to a team-shared Linux machine with SSH daemon. Each team member has a user account, and they can manage their SSH authorized keys, including keys stored on Yubikey. The team can share files and git repositories on the Linux machine's own storage. Some differences I see with this approach are the federated aspect and "append-only data structures that allow clients to catch dishonest server behavior".

2) compare to Radicle, a decentralized git service. Identities are keypairs.

With FOKS, how coupled is storage of git and secrets to the FOKS server?

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