Comment on The fediverse has a bullying problem
AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 1 week agoI’m not sure you can make that conclusion. This isn’t a real vulnerability, and this isn’t a surprise to anybody who knows how the AP protocol works. Dansup didn’t reveal anything that was previously unknown, the blog author just has an axe to grind. It’s unfair to assume that an actual 0 day vulnerability would have been treated the same way.
Correct. And as I tangentially mentioned, even if you do think this needs to be kept secret, then the blog author would still be wrong, because this blog post is doing is doing way more “harm” by publicizing the issue than any amount of commit notes ever could.
But yes, trying to keep this secret like a 0-day is completely the backwards model for how to handle it.
brrt@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
I’m genuinely curious what you would call this and what distinguishes it from a vulnerability.
Leaving aside responsibility, the system could have been set up in a way that wouldn’t have exposed user data but wasn’t. This is now fixed and user data isn’t exposed via this method any longer. What is the right word for what it was at the moment this flaw was discovered?
AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
Not me who downvoted you, FYI.
To me, a vulnerability is something unforeseen, that allows bad actors to exploit the system in an unintended manner. In this case, the system is working perfectly as designed. Just because another system decided to implement a new feature without consulting anybody else, does not make it a vulnerability. Or perhaps it does, but with the vulnerability on the side of Mastodon, since they’re the ones telling their users their post is private when it is actually nothing of the sort.
What would I call it? An unsupported feature. One that Mastodon forced everybody else to implement without asking or any respect.
brrt@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
I appreciate your reply and understand your perspective. I still don’t fully agree, it might be a matter of the point of view from which you look at this issue. But I think in essence we are on the same page.
Thanks for not abandoning the discussion!