2 ms·

It seems like "code from a zillion servers, retrieved over a zillion TLS connections" can be solved by serving the app from a single origin. You have to vendor

by wmf 3y ago

It seems like "code from a zillion servers, retrieved over a zillion TLS connections" can be solved by serving the app from a single origin. You have to vendor your dependencies but that's probably wise anyway.

michaelt 3y ago
Isn't the whole point of using E2EE on Company A's messenger app that you distrust Company A? After all, they could easily serve up slightly different js when you log into their website; for all practical purposes it would be undetectable. Being reasonably confident that you're running the same code as everyone else seems pretty important to me - and that's not how the web works.
- wmf 3y ago
  That's the ideal but browsers don't support that today. Trusting the client but not the server is weaker but still better than nothing.
  - bawolff 3y ago
    > That's the ideal but browsers don't support that today. Which is why people say E2EE is unsuitable to the browser. Sure there exists other threats and other security issues in the browser, many of which can be addressed by various means, but that is a different thing than E2EE.
hexo 3y ago
Yes, it's odd to me that everyone has to serve some random JS from some random ( to me very untrusted) third party cdn server. Why every single random site has to have like 8 different domains with random character variations and serve javascript from it. To me that seems completely bonkers, absolutely unstrustworthy and extremely lame, as if they have no actual money to do it like a normal person. Like FB serving stuff from facebook dor com but also from random, lame domain fbcdn AND also fbsbx (wtf is that???!?, i dont trust it at all). And thats on the "reasonable side", random wordpress site or eshop is a complete nightmare in this regard.
- jeltz 3y ago
  The reason used to be performance, but now with modern browsers and especially HTTP3 I doubt that is true anymore. I guess the separation into CDN and non-CDN stuff could still make sense since you can serve static resources from even closer to the user than you serve your dynamic stuff while avoiding having the CDN proxy traffic to the website backend.

by wmf 3y ago

michaelt 3y ago

Isn't the whole point of using E2EE on Company A's messenger app that you distrust Company A? After all, they could easily serve up slightly different js when you log into their website; for all practical purposes it would be undetectable. Being reasonably confident that you're running the same code as everyone else seems pretty important to me - and that's not how the web works.

wmf 3y ago
That's the ideal but browsers don't support that today. Trusting the client but not the server is weaker but still better than nothing.
- bawolff 3y ago
  > That's the ideal but browsers don't support that today. Which is why people say E2EE is unsuitable to the browser. Sure there exists other threats and other security issues in the browser, many of which can be addressed by various means, but that is a different thing than E2EE.

hexo 3y ago

Yes, it's odd to me that everyone has to serve some random JS from some random ( to me very untrusted) third party cdn server. Why every single random site has to have like 8 different domains with random character variations and serve javascript from it. To me that seems completely bonkers, absolutely unstrustworthy and extremely lame, as if they have no actual money to do it like a normal person. Like FB serving stuff from facebook dor com but also from random, lame domain fbcdn AND also fbsbx (wtf is that???!?, i dont trust it at all). And thats on the "reasonable side", random wordpress site or eshop is a complete nightmare in this regard.

jeltz 3y ago
The reason used to be performance, but now with modern browsers and especially HTTP3 I doubt that is true anymore. I guess the separation into CDN and non-CDN stuff could still make sense since you can serve static resources from even closer to the user than you serve your dynamic stuff while avoiding having the CDN proxy traffic to the website backend.