Besides limiting requests to the match group, they could save the distance at match time, and just show that. Once you match, the distance doesn't matter.
Vulnerability in Bumble dating app reveals any user's exact location
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Re: Vulnerability in Bumble dating app reveals any user's exact location
#32I am not very knowledgable about security bounties, but 2k seems laughably small. Every female using the app was gravely in danger because of this bug. There are a lot of creeps on dating apps. That it got awarded just 2k and no resignation of CTO is a joke
Gravely in danger, for all 18+ (within the US at least) is a bit of a stretch. You can find the current/last known address of nearly any registered voter with a simple Google search. I'm not exactly sure why or how, but you can. There are also services, that aren't exactly expensive, in which you can buy the phone number or address of nearly everybody in the U.S. If you think being able to triangulate and pinpoint th…
I agree with the sibling comment that the key word is "potentially," but disagree with your sentiment that "I haz whitepages, game over" since the difference is that ones voter record address does not travel with them everywhere in their purse/pocket
To further illustrate the point, I believe trips to Tahoe are a non-trivial source of hookups, but being able to follow a potential match back to their chalet is not something anyone would voluntarily opt-into
Re: Vulnerability in Bumble dating app reveals any user's exact location
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s only a partial solution; you still need to limit the queries. Otherwise, just sample a large number of coordinates and average out the noise.
Yeah, its an overcomplicated, breakable solution. Just decide the minimum safe uncertainty, assign grid cells that provide it, and only report distance quantized to grid cells.
Every time this comes up a hundred people decide you "just" need to quantize, and that does help but is still vulnerable in multiple ways, including if you have low "valid location" density (think a grid cell that is 95% water) or if you're on a boundary and flip between two cells. It's easy to mitigate the normal case but takes more thought to mitigate the edge cases.
Re: Vulnerability in Bumble dating app reveals any user's exact location
#34I don't see why apps like that should give you an exact distance instead of some rough estimate. "X is a few miles away", "X is less than a,mile away", "X is several yards away" (which is, say, within 30-50 yards) — and more precision is not needed. If users want contact, they need to explicitly coordinate. This approach, of course, should not be centered on the exact user location, but use some rough and slightly ir…
It’s easy to measure statistics of a device noising among several grid cells to find with high probability the exact coordinate. Think of a person standing right where grid lines intersect, so with 25% probability each time the position will be reported to be one of four neighboring cells (due to errors in GPS measurement), which gives their exact location right on the intersection. If the probability weights’ distribution is different, it’s easy to infer the coordinate as well. Or if the person is moving, you can build their trajectory with high confidence.
It’s not that easy to obfuscate the coordinate in a way that the position is still relatively accurate (for the purpose of distance), and not “hackable” with some basic statistics.
Re: Vulnerability in Bumble dating app reveals any user's exact location
#35My solution: Group people by zip code, give distance ranges based on the two users' zip codes.
Within same zip code or two zip codes that border each other? "0 feet to (farthest distance between any two points within zip code(s))"
Zip codes farther apart? "(closest distance between any two points within zip code) to (farthest distance between any two points within zip code)"
No need to limit queries, no need to fuzz anything. No way to triangulate unless one person happens to live at the corner of three or more zip codes, in which case you could just pin them to one zip code as long as they are within a certain range of that zip code.
In areas where zip codes are unusually large (Alaska?) or unusually small (NYC?), you can substitute in some other chunk metric.
Re: Vulnerability in Bumble dating app reveals any user's exact location
#36My solution: Group people by zip code, give distance ranges based on the two users' zip codes. Within same zip code or two zip codes that border each other? "0 feet to (farthest distance between any two points within zip code(s))" Zip codes farther apart? "(closest distance between any two points within zip code) to (farthest distance between any two points within zip code)" No need to limit queries, no need to fuzz…
I think we went over this when the telegram version of this hit HN a while back.
It just doesn't work.
For zip codes for example: There are single street zip codes (aka postal codes) all over Canada. And I'm not talking a large boulevard that goes across town. Literally one street that I can see one end from the other on easily.
Re: Vulnerability in Bumble dating app reveals any user's exact location
#37My solution: Group people by zip code, give distance ranges based on the two users' zip codes. Within same zip code or two zip codes that border each other? "0 feet to (farthest distance between any two points within zip code(s))" Zip codes farther apart? "(closest distance between any two points within zip code) to (farthest distance between any two points within zip code)" No need to limit queries, no need to fuzz…
I think we went over this when the telegram version of this hit HN a while back. It just doesn't work. For zip codes for example: There are single street zip codes (aka postal codes) all over Canada. And I'm not talking a large boulevard that goes across town. Literally one street that I can see one end from the other on easily.
Sure, but you could detect zip codes that are under a certain length and/or area, keep combining them until they are large enough. Zip codes are just a starting point, the concept would still apply. Group people into sufficiently large chunks, only reveal their chunk. It could be a grid instead if that makes more sense, but I imagine zip codes make use of borders along rivers and other forms of convenience.
Re: Vulnerability in Bumble dating app reveals any user's exact location
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think we went over this when the telegram version of this hit HN a while back. It just doesn't work. For zip codes for example: There are single street zip codes (aka postal codes) all over Canada. And I'm not talking a large boulevard that goes across town. Literally one street that I can see one end from the other on easily.
Sure, but you could detect zip codes that are under a certain length and/or area, keep combining them until they are large enough. Zip codes are just a starting point, the concept would still apply. Group people into sufficiently large chunks, only reveal their chunk. It could be a grid instead if that makes more sense, but I imagine zip codes make use of borders along rivers and other forms of convenience.
There's usually always a catch.
Your try to make it less easy to find someone also makes it less good for the intended use case. Suddenly the app can only tell you if someone is in the same town or not because we combined the heck out of zips.
But the you realize that at the edges of whatever combination you chose you can find if someone is on one side or another of those areas. And these areas have borders on many sides so many cells to triangulate with and play the "are you here or on the other side".
So basically both requirements fight each other and guess which one won and what the results are.
Re: Vulnerability in Bumble dating app reveals any user's exact location
#39I am not very knowledgable about security bounties, but 2k seems laughably small. Every female using the app was gravely in danger because of this bug. There are a lot of creeps on dating apps. That it got awarded just 2k and no resignation of CTO is a joke
Crime is not difficult. Every woman is already in danger. As is every human. Every animal. The world is dangerous.
If level of danger caused by a company was proportional to punishment, then every gun or tobacco (secondhand smoke) or fossil fuel company would have to have everyone in the org resign effective immediately.
Re: Vulnerability in Bumble dating app reveals any user's exact location
#40I, for one, enjoyed the writing style. It made it enjoyable to read, and it wasn't dry like other security vulnerability posts.
I find Rob's writing highly enjoyable too. It is witty without talking to the reader like he is 10. Not very HN-y, but I recommend his serie on being a parent : https://robertheaton.com/married-with-kids/
I thought
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