I’m certainly no web security expert, but shouldn’t Tea’s junior network/backend/security developers, let alone seniors, know how to secure said Firebase or S3 buckets with STARTTLS or SSL certificates? Shouldn’t a company like this have some sort of compliance department?
It’s a little more complex than that. If you want the app on the user device to be able to dump data directly into your online database, you have to give it access in some way. Encrypting the transmission doesn’t do much if every app installation contains access credentials that can be extracted or sniffed.
Obviously there are ways around this too, but it’s not just “use TLS”.
Encrypting the transmission doesn’t do much if every app installation contains access credentials that can be extracted or sniffed.
Encrypt the credentials then? Or OAUTH pipeline, perhaps? Automated temporary private key generation for each upload (that sounds unrealistic, to be fair)? Can credentialing be used for intermediary storage that encrypts the data on that server and then decrypted on the database host?
Clearly my utter “noobishness” is showing, but at least it’s triggering a slight urge to casually peruse modern WebSec production workflows. I am a DNN researcher. Thus, I am far removed from customer-facing production environments, and it shows.
Any recommendations on literature or articles on how engineers solve these problems in a “best practices” way that you can recommend? I suppose I could just look it up, but I thought I’d ask.
Edit: I don’t know why I’m down-voted. My questions were sincere.
You’ve got the right ideas. Noone should ever be storing any password in plaintext. It should always be hashed and only the hash stored. That’s like WEBDEV99 (remedial course, not even 101).
Really. Despite your stated “noobishness”, you basically landed in the territory of best practices right of the bat.
If you’re looking for a good source of best practices, the CIS benchmarks are great. https://www.cisecurity.org/
Brother, I need the “remedial” lessons since I self-host a lot of my experimental DNN solutions on a GPU cluster served via CasaOS/Ubuntu-Server LTS.
I’ve followed basic tutorials about nginx, end-to-end encryption, and DNS, but I need more knowledge and training about the theory behind modern security best practices. I think I’m doing okay but I have this ever-present anxiety that I’ve overlooked something and my ass (i.e., sensitive data) is really just hanging out in the wind.
I’m certainly no web security expert, but shouldn’t Tea’s junior network/backend/security developers, let alone seniors, know how to secure said Firebase or S3 buckets with STARTTLS or SSL certificates? Shouldn’t a company like this have some sort of compliance department?
It’s a little more complex than that. If you want the app on the user device to be able to dump data directly into your online database, you have to give it access in some way. Encrypting the transmission doesn’t do much if every app installation contains access credentials that can be extracted or sniffed.
Obviously there are ways around this too, but it’s not just “use TLS”.
Encrypt the credentials then? Or OAUTH pipeline, perhaps? Automated temporary private key generation for each upload (that sounds unrealistic, to be fair)? Can credentialing be used for intermediary storage that encrypts the data on that server and then decrypted on the database host?
Clearly my utter “noobishness” is showing, but at least it’s triggering a slight urge to casually peruse modern WebSec production workflows. I am a DNN researcher. Thus, I am far removed from customer-facing production environments, and it shows.
Any recommendations on literature or articles on how engineers solve these problems in a “best practices” way that you can recommend? I suppose I could just look it up, but I thought I’d ask.
Edit: I don’t know why I’m down-voted. My questions were sincere.
You’ve got the right ideas. Noone should ever be storing any password in plaintext. It should always be hashed and only the hash stored. That’s like WEBDEV99 (remedial course, not even 101).
Really. Despite your stated “noobishness”, you basically landed in the territory of best practices right of the bat.
If you’re looking for a good source of best practices, the CIS benchmarks are great. https://www.cisecurity.org/
Brother, I need the “remedial” lessons since I self-host a lot of my experimental DNN solutions on a GPU cluster served via CasaOS/Ubuntu-Server LTS.
I’ve followed basic tutorials about nginx, end-to-end encryption, and DNS, but I need more knowledge and training about the theory behind modern security best practices. I think I’m doing okay but I have this ever-present anxiety that I’ve overlooked something and my ass (i.e., sensitive data) is really just hanging out in the wind.
Thank you for your recommendation.
I am not sure, but I read somewhere that the developer(s) used vibe coding to create the app so…
A lot of people have speculated that.
According to their statement their code was written in Feb/2024 and predates “vibe coding”
What intrigue me is this:
So they used vibe coding, they are only saying that they think/hope that it is not the cause of the break (and maybe also of the second one)
And if vvibe coding is not caused then they are even more incompetent.