#dev 2025-08-28

2025-08-28 UTC
grufwub, gregsarjeant, sarna, [tw2113], eb, gRegor, okCiel, Saige_Leah, Saige_Leah_, barnaby, oodani, barnabywalters, just_jimmy, [Trevor_Morris], kushal, bterry1, revi, ttybitnik, axxuy, rozodru, marc_in_space, CRISPR, [artlung], pfych, alephalpha0 and DJ_[dj_je][d] joined the channel
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capjamesg aaronpk I am thinking about how to store capability URLs for my web reader. I was thinking of encrypting them and storing the keys in a secrets management tool. The upside is that the URLs would be unreadable without the key; the downside is that if someone got access to the server they could technically request the key from the secrets management service.
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capjamesg I was wondering if there were any best practices I should keep in mind.
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capjamesg I am new to this so any recommended readings would be sincerely appreciated!
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.pi.r2. sorry I know little about the context capjamesg[d] but do they need to be used asynchronously, or do you have a browser around when you need them?
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capjamesg The only time the URLs need to be read are when users are managing their feeds (i.e. editing a feed) or in the back-end when the feed polling script runs.
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.pi.r2. ah the latter is async. too bad
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capjamesg What was your suggestion going to be?
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.pi.r2. otherwise the browser could decipher them on the fly, then you could keep them ciphered on the sever. the key could be derived from a passphrase and potentially held in local storage
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capjamesg I am curious about that. What if the key in local storage is lost?
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.pi.r2. you type the passphrase again
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.pi.r2. well, use a password manager 🙂
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.pi.r2. it's derived deterministically right
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.pi.r2. using browser APIs like https://github.com/xmit-co/1pw.me/blob/main/src/app.tsx#L27-L45
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.pi.r2. then tweetnacl crypto works well, as per the rest of this file
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.pi.r2. sorry could have split logic apart from view, I was lazy
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.pi.r2. anyway, not viable here
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capjamesg Oh interesting.
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capjamesg So the user could set a private key in the browser, the public key is sent to the service, then the service encrypts data that is only readable when the user opens the page in their browser?
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.pi.r2. yup
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.pi.r2. websocket so the server can ask to decrypt whenever, or a single decrypt-everything exchange when opening a session
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[snarfed] E2EE fead reader! that is...aggressive 😁
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[snarfed] (sorry, I guess E2EE web server ACLs, not feed reader)
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capjamesg I think that could work for post titles and contents.
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capjamesg The problem I'm trying to solve right now is I wanted all the private URLs on the back end to be encrypted.
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aaronpk Wait why are there private URLs? Why not use a proper authorization model?
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aaronpk Capability URLs should be a last resort only when you absolutely need the features they provide
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capjamesg aaronpk Some podcasts (i.e. 404 Media, NPR) give you a private feed if you are a subscriber that gets you something (i.e. episodes a day early, no ads).
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aaronpk Oh I see, you're not creating the URLs, they are from external feeds?
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capjamesg Yeah.
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capjamesg It feels prudent to build the service in such a way that the URLs are stored as securely as possible given they may contain private info.
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capjamesg Post content too, but that is going to be trickier because I want to offer full-text search over that data.
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.pi.r2. well if your backend needs to be able to retrieve them on demand, it's game over
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.pi.r2. encrypt all you want, backend compromised → keys extracted
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capjamesg Yeah. I guess I was wondering if that was actually the scenario or if there was anything I could do.
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gRegor It does seem like it would be a complicated process to poll that way, have to decrypt to poll
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gRegor Is Artemis using WebSub?
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gRegor Oh I see it polls once a day. Maybe not a problem
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capjamesg It's not using WebSub.
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capjamesg I mean it could but it would add more complexity.
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capjamesg Is WebSub widely adopted?
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[tantek] Quite a few indieweb blogs support publishing via WebSub
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[tantek] What is WebSub
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Loqi WebSub is an open standard (W3C Recommendation) notification-based protocol for web publishing and subscribing to streams and legacy feed files in real time, previously known as PubSubHubbub or PuSH, and briefly PubSub https://indieweb.org/WebSub
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[tantek] I'd check the indieweb examples there
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[tantek] What is WebSub.rocks
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Loqi websub.rocks is a test suite for the WebSub protocol https://indieweb.org/websub.rocks
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gRegor WebSub may not be needed if you're intentionally polling only once a day. It would add complexity for sure.
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