5 ms·
Encryption must come standard
- rossy 10y agoI'd love to see more web apps that use WebCrypto to encrypt data on the client side, but WebCrypto has a problem. It's hard to trust programs that run on the web. Even if the app promises to encrypt user data, someone in control of the server could read any user's data by singling them out and sending them a different version of the site JavaScript that leaks the user's encryption keys. This means you must trust the server every time you load the web app. Even ServiceWorker apps are affected by this because the browser always checks the server for updates to the worker JavaScript and it does not support any form of code-signing. The best way to improve the state of client-side crypto on the web would be to close this hole and enable some kind of trust-on-first-use for the web, but it's difficult, because this model of trust is at odds with how the web works. Cyph apparently does something resembling trust-on-first-use on the web by serving a ServiceWorker from a HPKP enabled domain and throwing away the private key, but that's not really what HPKP was designed for.
- mobitar 10y agoYeah, it's a tricky topic. For apps that aren't social networks, I think we need to begin trending towards running our own servers and clients. This may not make sense in most cases, but in the case of say, personal notes, this seems obvious. This is why I'm working on an open protocol for encryption and ownership of notes at https://standardnotes.org https://standardnotes.org.