Hacker News Reader

Comment by igor47 | Hacker News Reader

imho, as much as i like firebase, i think the design encourages this kind of broken security model. the default is open-to-the-world with credentials in the client app. setting up firebase permissions is kind of a pain.

in the traditional db world, at least your db creds live on the server-side app.

View on HN

Firebase's DB (Firestore) being almost default-allow is even funnier, and that was the core functionality from the start, leading to tons of huge breaches over the years. At least a public file bucket is a more valid use case, except I'm guessing they left the "list files" permission open. Edit: Oh, chat DB is probably Firestore, so they left that open too, nice.

Having used it several times, yeah I wouldn't entrust it to a dev team. It's gotten better lately but still seems like the gun is always pointed at your foot.

Also GCP, storing secrets properly in AppEngine is notoriously difficult and prone to accidental git-commit: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/58371905/how-to-handle-s...

It's to this kind of quality engineering that they want me to entrust my ID so I can watch pr0n or insult a politician online. Jesus.

Are they specifically using Firebase for that? I'm not saying GCP is unsafe in general, just Firebase.

I wonder why I learnt “deny by default is a good starting point” in an undergraduate computer science course decades ago.

bro going to university is so overrated, just start vibe coding xD

/s btw

My naive understanding is that is the same approach taught in introductory law school.

The ones that did lost in the marketplace against the competitor which was more plug-and-play.

True story.

I'm a fan of rolling actual databases, but please don't blame Firebase.

The is completely the fault of the people who made that app.

They have no fucking idea how to build systems if they can't figure out how to lock down Firebase. It isn't that hard.

Source: Multiple Firebase apps back in the day.

No, hazardous defaults can be a source of fault for the entity providing them.

Ok but it’s not like pg can’t stop you from doing something dumb.

There are probably countless new projects today that are storing plaintext passwords, or not adding scoping, and so on.

Putting in scopes and ensuring data security for both users and system wide is on the developer.

It's hard to screw up Postgres to the extent that your entire DB is made fully accessible by all users. This has happened many times with Firebase apps, for over a decade.

You could have a SQL injection vuln, but any SQL lib will very clearly steer you to parameterized queries, and even then such a vuln takes some expertise to find and exploit.

That’s simply not true. I remember working with a startup founder who had Jerry rigged some crap shit together with gpt a year ago.

I was able to access his data by simply accessing it figuring out his URL and other stuff. I told him to use supabase or DO deployment and set up proper roles and stuff…

I think you’re being way too charitable honestly and it’s dangerous. I won’t join you on that path of absolving the developer of any blame.

They don’t read the docs and they didn’t care simply put. Any production system needs to be tested especially if it will have PII data.

Don't get me wrong, there is still such a thing as a bad dev. If this startup founder actually wrote an entire app using GPT and it had such vulns, I'm pretty sure he'd mess up the Firebase ACLs too.

I blame Firebase, this is the 2nd app I saw get owned this way in the last 2 weeks, similar complete break-in including user data

Their docs literally show how to prevent this. It’s part of the tutorial even iirc.

But sure blame firebase lol

The variable here is Firebase, the same devs don't have these issues on other platforms. If users are reading and fully understanding the manual before setting things up, that's great, it can be default-deny and tell them how to selectively open things.

Again simply not true. Sorry I’m gonna move on.

Y’all can continue making excuses for people leaking PII. Peace.

One day, if you're lucky enough to engineer a quality product with scale, you'll realize why "they're holding it wrong" is generally a poorly received explanation, even if you're Steve Jobs.

I mean I already have a cushy IPO exit under my belt as a lead platform engineer.

So yeah already did it, global b2b product used by millions daily. I have nothing to prove anymore besides my current company that I’m doing on my own.

Everyone else can do whatever insignificant and make mistakes that’s on them.

But the fact I said "quality" and you conflated it with "I worked at a company that IPO'd and had lots of users" kind of says it all doesn't it?

For me good product is more of a passion than proving anything to anyone. And I definitely don't get better at product by victim blaming.

Cool man whatever makes you happy as long as you can excuse leaking PII

From one founder to another, you'll get further if you learn to learn, instead of flipping out because your bad take was called out as a bad take.

This is pointless. Moomoo, nobody is excusing Tea, it's just that Firebase is also not designed well.

You are absolutely correct. The founder of Tea app has only 6mo of coding bootcamp under his belt. That should explain pretty much everything that happened.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com