Facebook insecure by design

Joel jaeggli joelja at bogus.com
Sun Oct 2 22:43:47 UTC 2011


On 10/2/11 15:25 , Jimmy Hess wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 2, 2011 at 4:53 PM,  <Valdis.Kletnieks at vt.edu> wrote:
>> On Sun, 02 Oct 2011 08:38:36 PDT, Michael Thomas said:
>>> I'm not sure why lack of TLS is considered to be problem with Facebook.
>>> The man in the middle is the other side of the connection, tls or otherwise.
>> Ooh.. subtle. :)
> 
> Man in the Middle (MITM) is a technical term that refers to a rather
> specific kind of attack.
> 
> In this case, I believe the proper term would be just "The man".
> [Or  "Man at the Other End  (MATOE)"];  you either trust Facebook with
> info to send to
> them or you don't, and network security is only for securing the
> transportation of that information
> you opt to send facebook.

alice sends charlie a message using bob's api, bob can observe and
probably monetize the contents.

> Yes, if Alice sends Bob an encrypted message that Bob can read, and
> Bob turns out to
> be untrustworthy,  then  Bob can sell/re-use the information in an
> abusive/unapproved way for
> personal or economic profit.

charlie is probably untrustworthy, bob is probably moreso (mostly
because bob has more to lose than charlie), alice isn't cognizant of the
implications of running charlie's app on bob's platform despite the
numerous disclaimers she blindly clicked through on the way there.



> --
> -JH
> 





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