Keybase Browser Extension Insecure | Hacker News Reader

Keybase Browser Extension Insecure

grepular.com

69 pointszdw33 comments

I'm interested to see that Keybase is actually still maintained. After the Zoom Acqui-hire, they seemed to have moved on (last entry on their blog https://keybase.io/blog is May 21 2020) but there's activity on the GH repos, although nothing like the pace it used to develop (https://github.com/keybase/client/graphs/contributors).

Further discussion of this from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28814210

At the top the article says “Written 4 years ago”

Just one answer: https://keyoxide.org/

It's such a good maintained alternative to keybase

Just stop using browser extensions.

No you don’t need a JSON prettifier that has full powers and can read data from web pages on any domain. You don’t need a thing to help you to compose English prose better (or maybe you do but don’t use the extension).

The browser is the modern operating system, and we have made it trivial to allow users to pwn themselves with two clicks.

How is your argument different from "don't use software to solve problems"?

The "JSON prettifier" example is exactly what compromised my browser once, long ago. I only found out because I noticed the "this extension is no longer available on the Chrome store" mention on the chrome://extensions page or something of the sort.

It was silently ex-filtering list of all URLs I visited against a unique identifier.

"exfiltrating"

What about password managers? The browser built-in ones aren't always the best choice.

Why not?

1. Lack of a master password, so anyone who knows the password to your laptop knows all your passwords

2. Inability to access them anywhere, anytime

3. Possibility of compromise in case of compromise of system[1]

4. No sharing

5. Absolutely terrible password generation (a string of random characters)

[1]: https://null-byte.wonderhowto.com/how-to/hacking-windows-10-...

What’s wrong with a string of random characters?

Harder to type, harder to remember

It's from a password MANAGER.

As far as I know, none of the browser-provided password managers let you sync outside of an internet-connected account system. I can sync my passwords over my local network just fine.

I think that technically Firefox does, but it’s not easy to run your own account and sync server.

People really do need additional functionality beyond what the browser provides.

The browser should offer the user controls on what data plugins can remit from the computer.

Yeah. All extensions are potential malware. The only extensions I trust are uBlock Origin and those made by the EFF.

All software is potential malware. Sometimes the definition of malware depends on whether you're the user or not!

wym

Yes, but sometimes software comes from people who are generally trustworthy. Free and open source software from official Linux distribution repositories has a very low chance of being compromised.

> Just stop using browser extensions.

> The browser is the modern operating system...

This is kind of like advocating to only use vendor-provided software on your actual operating system because any third party software might be insecure (ignoring the fact that the OS itself may be as well). Some people might be able to do that but the overwhelming majority of people would not find that tenable, so suggesting that one just not is neither productive nor realistic.

I see it as yet another piece of propaganda from the corporate-totalitarianism side of the war on general-purpose computing. They started squeezing people into the browser, then they slowly castrate the browser and turn it into another tool of control. No userstyles, no userscripts, no extensions, no URLs... All in the name of "security", of course... and people will blindly believe.

The frog continues to cook slowly.

Seems like a bit of a stretch. You really shouldn't be putting anything extremely sensitive into a browser anyway, and Keybase calls it out themselves. Yes, it's missing from the extension page, but that's really the only "mistake" they've made.

So why does Keybase inject the textbox there? Injecting an input for a secure chat app into an insecure location is going to make people who trust keybase misunderstand the security profile of that input.

Is there another location they could? I'm not familiar enough with extension development to speak confidently but my understanding was that you had to manipulate the DOM if you wanted to impact I/O of the page

Per the post, if you click the button right in the browser menu bar, it spawns a chat window that’s outside the page DOM

Other than the post recommendation, using a secure "blank" iFrame hosted on their own domain might have worked as well, depending on their threat-model.

Zoom’s acquisition of Keybase could only mean bad things for Keybase.

It means Keybase loses internal developer attention (since Zoom ostensibly bought it for the tech talent) and/or Zoom plans to somehow boost its own services through existing KB users (privacy loss, but also unlikely given the relatively small userbase).

KB did also have some attraction because of its Stellar integration, but Stellar has not been managed well enough to attract enough developer attention (a different topic).

It’s too bad Wire became so corporate. KB and Wire were arguably the most secure messenger systems, and now we’re stuck with Signal.

Anything you type into a webpage can be seen by anyone who controls the content being delivered. Not news, this title is clickbait.

Would be great if dang could add (2017) to the title so there's less confusion.

Users here with Keybase in their profile remind me of citizen PATRIOT Act supporters

At the top the article says

“Written 4 years ago”

Reply on news.ycombinator.com