Another way of thinking online payment

I was reading an interesting post about encryption and it made me feel a need to respond on what is said about credit cards.

Capabili-what?

Very soon after I joined es-discuss, I read some messages by Mark S. Miller. Soon enough, I watched his infoQ talk. This talk introduces the notion of object capabilities. This talk and this concept blew my mind. “Modularity increases my security?”. And he also shows the problem (and a solution) of distributed secure currency. Any “smart” idea I’ll write in this post are actually more or less already in this part of the talk.

Unrelatedly, I watched a talk by Douglas Crockford which suggested people to go watch The Lazy Programmer’s Guide to Secure Computing by Marc Stiegler which strongly emphasis POLA. I did and took the same sort of mind-blowing shower. I will learn later that Marc Stiegler and Mark Miller have been working together.

This led me to start reading Mark Miller’s thesis (haven’t finished yet, but still working on it) and to watch some other talks. It also led me to read about petnames, rich sharing, website passwords, web introducer and many other interesting things.

There are years of serious research poorly summurized in the links above. I highly encourage to read and watch all of this, but I admit it takes a lot of time to.

Thousands of credit cards numbers stolen during the Sony Playstation network hack

People have given their credit card number to Sony. Sony got hacked. People were annoyed. Who is to blame? Sony for its flawed security? Let’s take another look at the problem.

I want to pay…

I want to pay online. I want to buy one item once or pay regularly (like in a monthly payment to Sony). What option am I given? Giving my credit card number. And this is a terrible idea!

…but not to give my credit card number!?

When I send my credit card number and any “secret” written on the card, I do not allow for a one-time payment (or regular) to one company for a given amount of money I choose. Rather, I give the authority to anyone reading my info to do a payment of any amount directed to anyone, anytime. And that’s a source of insecurity.

Another way of thinking online payment

Here is how payment could happen: I go to my bank website, I have a form where I choose the amount I want to pay, who I want to pay to and to which frequency (one time, once a month, etc.). The two last fields are optional. In exchange, the bank gives me a secret (a URL for instance). I share this secret with who I want to pay. End of story.

Of course, this is just an example crafted in 2 minutes that could probably be improved.

“Oh fuck! Sony is getting hacked again!”

So, In my imaginary world, Sony (or anyone, it’s not about Sony as you’ve understood) does not have access to my credit card number, but only to a secret allowing a payment only to it at a frequency that I chose and to an amount that I chose as well. Sony gets hacked? WHATEVER!

We could imagine extensions where I could tell my bank “such secret has been compromised. Please stop paying through it”, “regenerate a secret for the same parameters”, etc.

Conclusion

As Ben Adida mentions in his blog post, encryption is not the final answer to security. His analysis of how encryption may get in the way of social features is interesting.

I wrote this post to show that security without encryption can exist, even for payments. Object capabilities seems to have a huge misknown and underused potential to achieve this form of security.

In the particular case I described, it’s not here because it requires cooperation from banks. I’m looking forward to see banks implementing this!

A response to “How Google is quietly killing Firefox”

Here is a response to this article

Article summary

The article explains that browsers (all including Firefox and Chrome according to the author) crash more frequently because of a lack of memory since web applications are now more JavaScript intensive. The author explains that it’s not always the browser’s fault to be memory hungry and sometimes is the fault of the web developer. I agree with this part. I would even also add that it is not because JavaScript has a garbage collector that it avoids memory leaks. Some leaks are at the application level and I really think a “WebValgrind” should emerge to tell at the JavaScript level where a web app leaks.

Then starts paranoia:

Mozilla’s greatest revenue source today (accounting for more than 80 percent of annual income) is Google. Mozilla is deeply dependent on Google for operating revenue.

Mozilla is not dependent on Google. Mozilla is dependent on search-related contracts. Asa Doltzer wrote about it 4 years ago. He was right at the time and what he wrote still stands. Mozilla is not dependent on Google.

And it goes on:

If you buy the theory that most people who abandon Firefox do so because it crashes (runs out of memory) unpredictably, it stands to reason that all Google has to do to pick up market share in the browser world is publish AJAX-intensive web pages (Google Search, Gmail, Google Maps, etc.) of a kind that Firefox’s garbage-collection algorithms choke on — and in the meantime, improve Chrome’s own GC algorithms to better handle just those sorts of pages.

Response on different points

Google creates AJAX-intensive web apps that purposefully leak

This is a ridiculous accusation. Imagining that all competitors started to have better garbage collection, what would they be left with?

Google makes AJAX-intensive applications for the purpose of improving the user experience. End of story. Memory leaks are the result of the current software attitude which is to keep adding features without caring long-term performance.

Memory leaks are made to make Firefox crash

This is ridiculous as well. Does anyone really think that Google web devs wake up in the morning thinking “hey, what about I add a few more memory leaks to make a some browser crash?”. If the browser crash with a given service (Google maps, for instance), some people will change of browser, some others will just change of service and this is not in Google interest.

Also, why does Firefox crash in the first place? Maybe Firefox should work toward improving it’s memory management? Oh wait! they are already working on that!! (and these are just a few links). Once we see improvements of these bugs on Firefox, I guess Google web devs will have to work a lot harder to make Firefox crash. Good luck, guys!

On “Google is a uniform corporation with an evil plan to kill Firefox, booo!”

I recently attended JSConf.eu and I’ve had the occasion to chat a few minutes with Erik Corry after his talk on improving V8 garbage collection. Call me naive or stupid, but the image I kept from him was the one of a dedicated (maybe even passionate) engineer working to improve his product. Is he a slave serving an evil Masterplan to control the universe? I don’t think so.

On hyperbolic blog article titles

“How Google is quietly killing Firefox“, “Is Google Chrome the New IE6?“… What is the next title? “Chrome is bringing back Nazis”?

Chris Heilmann already warned us about hyperboles (start at slide 74). I think we really should stop these titles, because they create more confusion that anything. No, Chrome’s plan is not to kill Firefox by purposefully introducing memory leaks in its webapps. No, Chrome is not IE6. There are many differences.

I agree that there are some disturbing informations about Google and its commitment to openness, but it does not make Chrome IE6.

Side note. It took me some time to understand why my previous post hit 1400 views and I get now that it probably its title was sort of flashy. I regret it.

Free “as in free speech” or why I don’t by Apple’s products

I read the RudeBaguette‘s article about the silence since the Applidium’s hack and it reminded me the core ideals I care about and what I fight for.

The article

Some folks “hacks” Siri, figured a way to use it in a way Apple hasn’t intended it for and advertised it on their blog. It creates a buzz, some people see potential (use Siri as a remote control, to turn off your car and lock it…).

Then, suddenly, no one talks about it anymore. The blog posts with reverse engineering details disappears. And no press cover anymore.

The article suggests a conspiracy as a conclusion.

Apple’s world

Apple Terms Of Services:
“Apple grants you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable, limited license to use the Software as provided to you by Apple as a part of the Service and in accordance with these TOS; provided that you do not (and do not permit anyone else to) copy, modify, create a derivative work of, reverse engineer, decompile, or otherwise attempt to discover the source code (unless expressly permitted or required by law), sell, lease, sublicense, assign, grant a security interest in or otherwise transfer any right in the Software.” (emphasis added)

No reverse engineering? No decompiling? No granting of a security interest? That’s a lot of restriction! Probably too restrictive to make Applidium’s reverse-engineering legal by Apple’s terms.

Legal terms and conspiracy

I’m not a legal expert in any fashion, but Stéphane Distinguin declining to comment, the press stopping to cover Applidium’s hack may just be the effect of Apple applying its terms of services, it’s legal rights. A conspiracy? I don’t see any conspiracy. Just a company claiming its rights.

On the right to do whatever the fuck you want with your own device and softwares

So many free software institutions have been claiming this particular right for years. Idealists? Naive? Maybe. But at least, when you deal with them, you don’t need to agree that you restrict your own rights to do whatever you want with the hardware and software you buy unlike with Apple.

Apple does not allow you to do what you want with what you buy. If you buy an Apple device knowing that on purpose, that’s your choice. If you buy an Apple device and think there is a conspiracy whenever they remind you that you’re not allowed to do what you want with you’re device, you’re just fooling yourself.

Some choices of my own

As it turns out, I don’t buy Apple products. Because I want to be in control of my own life. I want to be able to hack my device to use it as a remote control (I don’t have a TV) or to turn my car off and lock it (I don’t have a car) and not being told by the company who I bought it from that I am not allowed to. I believe in Creative Commons content that people will be able to share for the purpose of education. I believe in projects like Mozilla’s Boot2Gecko with which I’m sure I’m never going to be told that I can’t do what I want. I believe in free software so that I don’t get fucked later on and am never in doubt of a conspiracy of any sort.