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FOKS: Federated Open Key Service

foks.pub

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Re: FOKS: Federated Open Key Service

#41

Post by maxtaco »

oooyay wrote: post #39
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…

FOKS is a cool project; what kind of projects do you foresee getting spun off from this? I'm actually working on a crytpography based project inspired by Keybase's use of Merkle Trees and identity proofing but with an added dash of privacy through pseudonyms and chain hashing. Thanks for putting time into this.

Thanks! Would love to see a file sync app, an MLS-based chat (where the encryption key is essentially a combination of the keys output from MLS and the PTK from FOKS). Password managers. I think there's the potential for something like a Hashicorp-Vault-style server-side secret key material manager, but many details left to reader. Maybe a Skiff-style Google-docs clone? I think there are lot of potential directions to go in.

Re: FOKS: Federated Open Key Service

#42

Post by maxtaco »

dannyobrien wrote: post #11
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.

Thanks Danny! The Keybase team (not including me) deserves all the credit, I've been gone for over six months. It's a great team and I miss working with them.

Re: FOKS: Federated Open Key Service

#43

Post by iovoid »

The whitepaper says:

> all the admins and owners — those who have the ability to change the team — must be on the same home server

Maybe with easy multi-accounting it could be made less annoying, but this seems like a big limitation for a federated system.

Re: FOKS: Federated Open Key Service

#44

Post by evolve2k »

eadmund wrote: post #33
chowells wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it shows a lack of respect for and understanding of the work graphic artists actually do. Now if that's your brand, great. You are communicating it effectively. If it's not your brand, it's probably worth considering the subtext in your presentation.

> it shows a lack of respect for and understanding of the work graphic artists actually do No more than wearing off-the-rack clothes shows a lack of respect for and understanding of the work tailors actually do. No more than wearing factory-woven cloth shows a lack of respect for and understanding of the work weavers actually do. No more than heating a can of soup shows a lack of respect for and understanding of the…

The cost of obtaining the alternative; Creative Commons use images or even just inserting emojis is already free. Your argument doesn’t hold up.

Re: FOKS: Federated Open Key Service

#46

Post by packetlost »

maxtaco wrote: post #41
oooyay wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FOKS is a cool project; what kind of projects do you foresee getting spun off from this? I'm actually working on a crytpography based project inspired by Keybase's use of Merkle Trees and identity proofing but with an added dash of privacy through pseudonyms and chain hashing. Thanks for putting time into this.

Thanks! Would love to see a file sync app, an MLS-based chat (where the encryption key is essentially a combination of the keys output from MLS and the PTK from FOKS). Password managers. I think there's the potential for something like a Hashicorp-Vault-style server-side secret key material manager, but many details left to reader. Maybe a Skiff-style Google-docs clone? I think there are lot of potential directions t…

Something like pa should be easy enough to port to it as a first pass: https://github.com/biox/pa

IMO Vault is really nice, but something as simple as possible is better for managing secrets, especially when the storage layer has permission and sane encryption handled for you.

Re: FOKS: Federated Open Key Service

#47

Post by comex »

kstrauser wrote: post #25
hofrogs wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why is that different from disliking their font preference? It's an aesthetic choice, made by someone who's not advertising their web design expertise, that's purely subjective. If this site were their product, maybe that'd matter. But why does that matter in this context?

It shows the author is willing to publish content that looks right at first glance but falls apart upon closer inspection, lacking rigor and consistency. That same description could also apply to your average amateur cryptosystem, which tends to be insecure as a result. If the author has low standards for images, might he also have low standards for his own code?

In this case, probably not! The text on the website and the author’s comments here and his background all suggest that he writes high-quality cryptosystems. But the AI art by itself is still evidence pointing to lower quality.

Re: FOKS: Federated Open Key Service

#48

Post by maxtaco »

iovoid wrote: post #43

The whitepaper says: > all the admins and owners — those who have the ability to change the team — must be on the same home server Maybe with easy multi-accounting it could be made less annoying, but this seems like a big limitation for a federated system.

Easy multi-accounting is something that I hope we already have (`foks key switch` is pretty smooth). It's a feature I use a lot (I have a personal account on @foks.app and our company account is on @ne43.foks.cloud).

This is a great point and I thought a lot about this. This is the sort of thing that can be changed later if it's really a good idea, but I got to thinking that having non-local admins would mean more server-to-server communication and more server-to-server trust, and I was trying to avoid that.

Imagine alice@foo is an admin of bluejays@bar. One thing alice@foo will need to do is to make signed changes to bluejays@bar, when adding or removing members, let's say. Right now, the server at bar will check the validity of these signatures, that they were made with the alice@foo's latest key. So in other words, there would have to be some way for bar to authenticate to foo to allow bar to read alice's sigchain and to determine her latest key.

I was thinking that keeping foo and bar separated was a good idea both in terms of privilege separation and keeping the network simpler (which would in turn be good for uptime and would simplify software upgrades).

Re: FOKS: Federated Open Key Service

#49

Post by throwaway328 »

kstrauser wrote: post #25
hofrogs wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Why is that different from disliking their font preference? It's an aesthetic choice, made by someone who's not advertising their web design expertise, that's purely subjective. If this site were their product, maybe that'd matter. But why does that matter in this context?

If someone used comic sans for their cryptographic software landing page, and someone else said: "this font makes me wonder if I can have any faith in this human being's aesthetic sense", I am willing to bet a nickel that you wouldn't be employing any of the same arguments that you're now employing to defend their choice of LLM images so devotedly.

Many people find using LLM images tacky and garish. It screams low-effort slop, to a significant number of people. When it's so easy to find great usable images on wikipedia, for example, it's hard to know why a sophisticated technical person would take the risk involved in this choice.

I'd a quick look there at the images on the wp page for chains, and the one for knots - some really excellent images. One doesn't need a PhD in web design to pull it off, either.

Re: FOKS: Federated Open Key Service

#50

Post by minitech »

tln wrote: post #30
hofrogs wrote: post #12

[flagged]

Those images (bootstrap, vault) are so tertiary to the both the article and the project. I'm excited to try this out personally! Thanks for building this maxtaco

Yes, they’re so tertiary that there was no reason to include them on the website. They’re ugly and mismatched, don’t consistently add value to the content, and make a negative first impression (for these reasons and for people who have valid aversions to AI slop). (By the way, all or almost all of the images are generated, not just the two you listed.) Useless images are far from a new problem (gotta love those Medium-article-style heros that can take multiple MB when people forget to optimize them) but AI further lowers the quality bar.
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