Trouble with Diaspora • Hacker News Board

Re: Trouble with Diaspora

#61

Post by carussell » Fri, Sep 17, 2010, 5:23 PM UTC

citricsquid wrote: post #36

gloob wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft didn't "build security in at the start", nor did Apple, nor did Twitter, nor (I suspect) did Facebook or YouTube. It's a pre-alpha of an open source project. Of course there will be problems.

Yeah and how much code is being used now that existed when they didn't have security? You can't compare this and what Microsoft, Apple or Twitter have done, I'd be very surprised if any of those companies continue to use code that was developed at a time when they didn't consider security. Although thinking about it, the software industry is questionable... maybe I'm wrong, it just seems a very bad start. Twitter has…

"Now" is a biased measure. There's a difference in years between "now" and the geneses for the projects you cite; for Diaspora, a couple of days.

During the summer, I could only shake my head at the hullabaloo coming from Diaspora supporters. Now it's at the detractors.

Re: Trouble with Diaspora

#62

Post by jarin » Fri, Sep 17, 2010, 5:27 PM UTC

agentultra wrote: post #8

The trouble is that they were so ambitious but lacked any experience from which to chart those ambitions. They're just a bunch of young twenty-somethings just getting out of school. They haven't built any large-scale real-world security-hardened software yet. More than the fact that the code isn't production ready (by a long shot it seems), I'm just surprised the released anything at all. Perhaps spending all that mo…

If anything, the hype might end up making some other better implementation actually have a chance of succeeding. If anyone else out there was thinking about doing a distributed social network, now's your shot at the limelight. You've got about a week to come up with a basic OStatus-based social network in Rails that isn't full of security holes.

Re: Trouble with Diaspora

#63

Post by Maro » Fri, Sep 17, 2010, 5:29 PM UTC

ohyes wrote: post #59

Maro wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they re-write, given that they're fairly inexperienced but are probably still sitting on a pile of cash, they run into the Second System Effect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-system_effect

"when following on from a relatively small, elegant, and successful system." I don't think that the second system effect applies, specifically given that it isn't elegant or successful yet. (In fact, most of the comments are that it is inelegant and a failure). Second system effect mostly reflects the evils of redesigning a perfectly good working product.

IMO the Wikipedia definition is too restrictive. SSE is common even if the first design wasn't small, elegant or successful.

Re: Trouble with Diaspora

#64

Post by steveklabnik » Fri, Sep 17, 2010, 5:31 PM UTC

Maro wrote: post #58

steveklabnik wrote: post #53

Please see the discussion from last night: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1699641 Rather than type a bunch of replies to everyone, here's some random thoughts: 1. Release early, release often is great. But when your product's main focus is "a private social network where you control your data" and other people can do anything they'd like with your account... 2. If this was just unpolished, I wouldn't say anythin…

"The mistakes are beyond amateur." Can you pinpoint them? I don't think it makes sense not to at this point..

Since I've already brought this up on Reddit...

For example: http://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/blob/master/app/controll...

There's no check to see if this is your photo or not. And before you mention it, the before_filter only checks if they're logged in, not permissions.

There are many, many similar things to this. Check out lib/encryptor.rb and shudder. I'm no security expert, but...

Re: Trouble with Diaspora

#65

Post by steveklabnik » Fri, Sep 17, 2010, 5:32 PM UTC

msy wrote: post #29

twymer wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's a big difference between "omfg bugs" and "The bottom line is currently there is nothing that you cannot do to someone's Diaspora account, absolutely nothing" from http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/16/diaspora_pre_alpha_l...

Not really, in fact that article was exactly what I was thinking of, reading it it'd be easy to get the impression they were talking about production software after the first sentence. Bugs are fixable and I haven't found any serious design or protocol mistakes, nor seen anyone else point any out. Given that, I'd say they're doing pretty damn well.

Yes, there are: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1699782

Re: Trouble with Diaspora

#66

Post by steveklabnik » Fri, Sep 17, 2010, 5:35 PM UTC

com wrote: post #51

latch wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't looked at the code, so I can't say this is the case, but... There's some stuff that good/experienced developers do upfront naturally. There are some security, design and performance things that are clearly a case of bad development versus "this is an early release". Fundamentals.

"Bad development" sounds like some kind of phrase from a 1950's development model. "Fundamentals" are things like: there's no identifiable data model, the code is pure spaghetti and structure is a fleeting concept. From my very quick scan of their code, it's readable, the parts of the data model I looked at are fairly obvious (thanks Rails), dependencies are identified, crypto seems fairly localised. Correction of bu…

Comments on the crypto: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1699782

And I'd say having no authorization in a project that's supposed to be about privacy is missing a fundamental.

Re: Trouble with Diaspora

#67

Post by code_duck » Fri, Sep 17, 2010, 5:39 PM UTC

steveklabnik wrote: post #64

Maro wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The mistakes are beyond amateur." Can you pinpoint them? I don't think it makes sense not to at this point..

Since I've already brought this up on Reddit... For example: http://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/blob/master/app/controll... There's no check to see if this is your photo or not. And before you mention it, the before_filter only checks if they're logged in, not permissions. There are many, many similar things to this. Check out lib/encryptor.rb and shudder. I'm no security expert, but...

That is pretty atrocious - I was very meticulous about issues like that (verifying ownership of resources before modifying them!) when I writing a what I knew to be an amateurish ecommerce system, with 9 months of PHP experience. No CS degree, nobody to help me. If they're doing stuff like this, the security situation is even worse than people are saying. If you can't get the huge grain issues even remotely right, the fine grained stuff is sure to slide right past you.

Re: Trouble with Diaspora

#68

Post by erikpukinskis » Fri, Sep 17, 2010, 5:42 PM UTC

steveklabnik wrote: post #64

Maro wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The mistakes are beyond amateur." Can you pinpoint them? I don't think it makes sense not to at this point..

Since I've already brought this up on Reddit... For example: http://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/blob/master/app/controll... There's no check to see if this is your photo or not. And before you mention it, the before_filter only checks if they're logged in, not permissions. There are many, many similar things to this. Check out lib/encryptor.rb and shudder. I'm no security expert, but...

How is that a fundamental security flaw if there's an easy one line fix with no likely side effects?

Re: Trouble with Diaspora

#69

Post by daleharvey » Fri, Sep 17, 2010, 5:43 PM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #25

cilantro wrote: post #3

This code was released to developers as an incomplete preview. I'm not sure why people are holding it to the same standards as a finished product that's being released to end users. Seems like a pretext to talk trash.

Their product is released to end users, because the first thing every early adopter is doing with their shiny new host-you-own federated social network is sending out invites.

So they should develop the whole thing behind closed doors because some people are going to have to suffer the embarassment of having someone post "hahaha disregard that ... " on their mini facebook wall?

Their code is out there, they have openly said it is full of bugs and they now have a hell of a lot of eyes, They will get a massive benefit from this being opened early and it really isnt their problem if people refuse to ignore all their and everyone elses advice and give out their banks password

Re: Trouble with Diaspora

#70

Post by EGreg » Fri, Sep 17, 2010, 5:44 PM UTC

Okay first of all, I'm glad that a bunch of undergrads from my school were able to raise $200k, get a lot of press, and build something. This alone should get a community of people around the project fixing bugs, etc.

I've always been saying that making a distributed social network is much easier than "solving" privacy and security for such a thing. First of all, try even defining what it means to privately share things with people on the internet. Then, realize that most solutions (such as diaspora) will actually EXACERBATE the privacy problem, by making you trust the hosting services of all your friends instead of just facebook.

That said, after diaspora was announced it made me think about whether it's possible to ensure privacy in principle. Meaning, is it possible to only trust YOUR hosting company and friends, and cut out every other middleman from being able to snoop your data?

I came up with something which I think would be very useful, and I actually submitted a provisional patent for the technology, which basically enables distributed AND private social networking using just today's web browsers.

If you want to check it out or get involved, see http://myownstream.com . This is an open-source offshoot of a social network I'm building, which I hope to release next year. You can see the roadmap there, but so far it's been going really well :)