Sounds MAGA level IT and dev.
How many red flags do you need to collect before you get a free cat?
A more ironic outcome couldn’t have happened
Why did the app had the government IDs and credit card data to begin with? The app looks like an obvious phishing scam/ Honeypot situation.
that’s a great(terrible) idea for a sex trafficking psyop. just get yourself a female spokesperson and make it a platform that gives a voice to women who have survived abuse. they’ll willingly give you all their information on where to find them and their psych profiles on how to manipulate them.
fucked up, but really shows how fucked up apps are in general and how much power we give to them over ourselves.
I think of the “bad” dates I would want to be able to warn other women of that didn’t rise to the level of calling the cops. The guy who ordered triple the food and drinks I did and skipped out on the bill. The guy who flat out lied about multiple things and then got irate when I politely excused myself from the date. The MAGA weirdo who went on an unhinged rant about how I needed to submit to him because God said so. I imagine some men have comparable experiences with some anti-social women. The experiences coming to mind were not illegal, but were absolutely things I want to spare my fellow humans from.
I would prefer the dating apps themselves have some mechanism for disincentivizing anti-social behaviors. It would have to be more than a simple 5-star rating.
I wonder how it would work IRL to offer the ability to write a few sentences in response to prompts about a date. The written review is not published as-is, but is used in grouping of many reviews to give a summary about a person. Like the summary product reviews on Amazon now. “Bill’s dates found he was prompt and polite. Some dates expressed discomfort at some of his political views” and “Bob’s dates warn he is often late and is quick to use foul language to describe women. Multiple dates report no intention to communicate with Bob further”. “Ben’s dates report he has skipped out on the bill repeatedly, and sends unsolicited dick pics. Multiple dates have blocked him”.
The group summary gives a buffer so the person reviewed doesn’t know which specific date said what. And ensures the summary doesn’t include negative comments about a person unless multiple dates of theirs independently report similar experiences.
Of course a bad actor could ditch their dating profile and start fresh any time they build up enough negative reviews to make their summary look bad. And of course the reviews and the summaries would have to be secured tighter than “Tea” is.
The experiences coming to mind were not illegal, but were absolutely things I want to spare my fellow humans from.
What about a guy who had a panic attack in the very beginning and couldn’t stop talking about his deceased dad, then about aunts and uncles, then about the dog, then about architecture, then didn’t get the hint because of all the shaking, got petrified when hinted at an alcohol element in the continuation of the meeting and in the end didn’t even understand a very direct hints at “only silence can save this” and having at least a sleepover?.. Who only became kinda normal after taking a sedative next morning, still shaking.
Just describing one negative experience I have provided in the past, and that while yeah, it wasn’t too cool - maybe lifelong shame is not what I deserve for that …
(Yes, I know that girl was a hero)
The group summary gives a buffer so the person reviewed doesn’t know which specific date said what. And ensures the summary doesn’t include negative comments about a person unless multiple dates of theirs independently report similar experiences.
That can’t be done without somehow verifying identities of all the people involved. Unless the review app is the same as the dating app. Then there are various technical variants, like some cryptographic connection between the reviewed person’s identity, the token representing one date, and a temporary identity for the reviewer, used to sign the review message. Something like that.
But that only for the entity doing the summary, which will have to be trusted with the original reviews. And that “buffer” will remove any kind of verification, unless it’s something egghead-smart like a smart contract forming the review on every client, which means every client can also see the original reviews. So I dunno.
Of course a bad actor could ditch their dating profile and start fresh any time they build up enough negative reviews to make their summary look bad. And of course the reviews and the summaries would have to be secured tighter than “Tea” is.
Honestly things like this should work like some hybrid of Briar and Freenet. Just entrusting it to a centralized service is as stupid as using Facebook. And in this specific case Briar model is kinda fine - if you synchronize with everyone using the application. You don’t need to have the reviews from everyone about everyone, just about people roaming the same general area.
I feel that the app filled a need of women we should not ignore. But the app, both this specific app and also the overall concept, is just too rife with downsides to be workable.
So we, as men and as society need to reevaluate why women feel the need for such an app, and reinvest in the criminal justice system to hold victimizers more accountable.
It’s okay to call this app and similar Facebook groups unacceptable. But that’s not enough, we must also call for stronger protections for victims of criminal behavior.
I think there must be a way to deliver on the value of the app without it being the privacy/public exposure nightmare it sounds like. Speaking naively, perhaps a setup where you can only speak about a person with those who have actually matched with them.
There’s no “matching” on this app, because men aren’t allowed. By its very design, you can’t avoid the unilateral one-sidedness.
Sorry, I do understand that, I was just thinking of an improvement that might help. I thought having the same phone number might work too but that gets dodgier.
It would be interesting to see something similar that required accusations to be backed up with evidence. Police reports, court proceedings and results, news articles etc.
It would also be a lot safer, legally speaking, for the service provider.
Something like Megan’s law but for domestic violence. I’m still not thrilled with the potential for abuse, but at least it wouldn’t be hearsay.
I’m sure the police unions would object, for obvious reasons.
S2 Underground has a great video about this. It’s basically a spy app with national security implications.
People using their military IDs for account verification and location data found in their pictures lays the argument that this data could be used for blackmail.
Lots of misandrists in this thread framing security failures as sexism against men
Well, we know what to bait a honeypot with. “Gossip about/slander men right here! To prove you’re a woman, insert your photo ID, bank details, credit card information, finger prints and retinal scans.”
It can be both.
So many problems are caused because society assumes cisgender women are always victims and anything that looks like a man if you look at it long enough is an abuser.
It’s just original Facebook but for women to rate and bully men instead of Mark and his scum bros using it to rate and bully women.
We didn’t like it when Mark did it, why would we like it now?
Lots of men in this thread real upset about this app pointing out how the majority men are shit
Lots of misandrists in this thread framing security failures as sexism against men
What are you basing the majority of men are shit on? Confirmation bias?
Well im a man. And most men i interact with are casually misandrist, ableist and homophobic. I can’t imagine they behave any better when they’re trying to fuck you
I’m a man too and I haven’t interacted with someone like that since what, university? Maybe the problem is in who you choose to spend time with?
Oh come on, you know how Those People are
Citation of course needed with that one.
The only people who will be listed on the app are people who are either deserving they’ve been on there or people who don’t deserve to be on there but some woman in their lives has decided to inact some vengeance justified or otherwise.
It’s an antisocial surveillance system for antisocial people, and creates a(n even more) antagonistic relationship between men and women.
Dating apps have been a disaster for dating, and this is perhaps the worst among them.
Defaming people without giving them a chance to defend themselves, talk about shit people…
On one hand, yes. On the other, women have, based upon crime statistics, legitimate reasons to avoid putting themselves in a situation where they may be assaulted or murdered for reporting problematic and/or worrisome behavior.
I don’t think creating an incel style circlejerk is the best solution.
It’s not defamation if it’s true
And its legally actionable libel/slander if false.
But have you considered man bad?
Wow just two days ago I see a post about how Lemmy is dominated by men and how that could become a problem, and today I see a comment section where all the incels come out of the woodwork.
“waaa somebody wants to solve a problem that has never affected me I’m the victim”
“omg what if people talk behind my back they might find out I’m an asshole? literally 1984”
“wadabout if this app was racist?!? checkmate”
I’m not saying this app is good or bad (I can definitely see the problems) but if an article about cybersecurity gets posted and this is our first reaction, makes me lose hope in Lemmy.
You make a valid point, this platform absolutely shits on anyone without technical knowledge, just look at the hundred or so smug replies telling you what flavor of Linux they run if you mention a problem with Windows. So, no surprise everyone is focusing on that, and not the human aspect here.
Having said that, there is a power imbalance to this that I really don’t like, the accuser gets to hide behind a veil of anonymity, and the accused has their name published, and is forced to defend themselves.
So, no surprise everyone is focusing on that, and not the human aspect here.
This is a technology community and the article is specifically about a security breach that exposed massive amounts of sensitive user data.
i mean…an app directly copying a black mirror episode (but almost exclusively targeting a specific demographic) does ring some very, VERY loud alarm bells…
like, this is literally the plot of nosedive.
it’s a social credit system.
and none of the people even know they HAVE a score, so it’s somehow even worse than the fictional scenario.
this will, absolutely, hurt innocents and it will do so by design.
“fuck them innocents!”…just because they happen to be men?
how is that anything other than misandrist?
how is that defensible?
how is doxxing, mass libel, and targeted harassment a solution to sexism and rape culture?
I’d be really interested in hearing anything about how this is supposed to help women, because i struggle to see how sowing massive, unearned distrust between men and women is going to make anyone any safer…
I’m really, REALLY glad that the GDPR would nuke this sort of nonsense from orbit…uploading pictures of strangers, for the explicit purpose of gossiping about them behind their backs, spreading awful rumors?
what. the. actual. fuck. is wrong with you people?
and i don’t mean women, or men: i mean americans and their total disregard for privacy and digital safety. what the hell…
“waaa somebody wants to solve a problem that has never affected me I’m the victim”
Everyone has the problem that they’d want to discuss others behind their back. It’s not accepted because it doesn’t work to any good end.
“omg what if people talk behind my back they might find out I’m an asshole? literally 1984”
You won’t find out anything from this. People sometimes lie, especially in such situations.
but if an article about cybersecurity gets posted and this is our first reaction, makes me lose hope in Lemmy.
Human adequacy is a big part of cybersecurity.
Yeah, this app sucks for a variety of reasons, but holy shit the misogyny in this thread.
Thanks for looking out for us. However, I, too, am a bit concerned. This is how Facebook started. The tech industry has zero ethics. I recommend women, AND men, have a trusted safety buddy when dating. When I met my spouse, I had two people who knew where I was, the person’s name, photo, employer, and where we were meeting.Do some internet stalking. If I don’t call you in an hour, come looking for me. If I call, I might ask for another hour, but you get the point.
Ah nice.
Time to implement a social score. Thise who rate highly have better access to social areas.
Those who rate lower are fucked for the rest of their life.
This sounds like such an amazing idea that has no shortcomings whatsoever!
Honestly it seems like a weapon that can too easily be used for defamation
I mean, yes, but does that take priority over women who are worried about their safety? There’s been women doing this over local Facebook groups for a long time. Defamation of this sort is not a new issue.
Considering even the mere accusation can ruin someone’s life? Yes.
The problem isn’t women don’t deserve to be safe, the problem is we cannot just give people powerful weapons with no oversight or burden of proof to be deployed simply because a date didn’t go well.
Facebook or App, the danger is too great
It was defamation the entire time just because somebody made it an app rather than a Facebook group doesn’t make any difference. It was always a crap thing to do.
Of course Tea took it to an entirely new level of stupid.
It was potentially defamation when it was just women…talking to one another, too. This seems like a pretty solid case of men looking at something women do to protect each other, and saying “…but what about the men who could be negatively affected in some cases?” I also think the tone in which this is being discussed is pretty revealing about Lemmy’s demographics.
the app is called TEA - it is a gossip vector masquerading as a safety mechanism, and people are making all sorts of claims about innocent people they had a bad date about, including their full name, location, workplace, pictures of their face - and accusing them baselessly in some (or most) instances of violent crimes.
If you can’t see how not only that wouldnt make women safer, but instead is a black mirror episode - there’s something wrong.
People against this app aren’t against women’s safety, and they dont necessarily believe our current systems and protection are adequate - but getting lynched by half a city because of a jaded ex is not a solution and is a crime of its own.
I mean half the posts on similar Facebook groups complain about the men being “narcissists” yeah its a shitty personality trait but thats clearly not a fucking safety issue, its about gossiping and doxxing people.
For what it is worth. I am a woman and I still think this app is wrong.
Yeah, because only men are talking about this.
How dare you!
The misogyny!No one is saying THAT’S misogynistic. We’re saying there are a bunch of stupid misogynistic comments in this thread, not that the app is cool.
Tea was storing its users’ sensitive information on Firebase, a Google-owned backend cloud storage and computing service.
Every time. With startups, it’s always an unsecured Firebase or S3 bucket.
My hey we’re probably using Firestore as their database without authenticating their api calls to firebase functions. Basically leaving their api endpoints open to the public Internet.
They could have connected service account and used some kind of auth handshake between that and generate a temporary login token based on user credentials and the service account oauth credentials to access the api. but they probably just had everything set to unauthenticated
Yup. It sounds like they were following security worst practices.
I get doing that in Dev for testing before launch, but in production? that’s insane.
Like it has to either be a junior developer playing the role of lead or some serious lack of web dev fundamentals haha
I’d argue that it should not even be done in Dev. Dev, staging/testing, and prod environments should all be as close to one another as possible, especially for infra like datastores.
I’m certainly no web security expert, but shouldn’t Tea’s junior network/backend/security developers, let alone seniors, know how to secure said firebase or S3 buckets with STARTTLS or SSL certificates? Shouldn’t a company like this have some sort of compliance department?
SSL is not the tool you need in this case, although you should obviously already be running exclusively on encrypted traffic.
The problem here is one of access rights - you should not make files default-available for anyone that can figure out the file name to the particular file in the bucket. At the very least, you need to be using signed URLs with a reasonably short expiration, and default all other access to be blocked.
As I mentioned in other comments, I am a noob when it comes to web-sec; please forgive what may be dumb questions.
Is it really just permission rights “over-exposure” issue? Or does one need to also encrypt and then decrypt the data itself that must be sent to a database?
Also, if you have time, recommend any links to web/cloud/SaaS security best practices “for dummies”?
As I mentioned in other comments, I am a noob when it comes to web-sec; please forgive what may be dumb questions.
There’s nothing to forgive. Asking questions and being curious is how you learn this stuff.
Is it really just permission rights “over-exposure” issue?
From what I’ve read, it’s more fundamental than that. It’s a basic architecture issue. The datastore was publicly accessible, which it should never be. If they had it setup according to best practices, with an API to proxy access and auth, the datastore’s permissions would be of minimal consequence, unless their network was compromised (still best practice to secure it and approach with a zero-trust mindset).
Or does one need to also encrypt and then decrypt the data itself that must be sent to a database?
Generally, cloud datastores handle encryption/decryption transparently, as long as the account accessing data has authorization to use the key. They probably also didn’t have encryption setup.
Also, if you have time, recommend any links to web/cloud/SaaS security best practices “for dummies”?
Here are some more resources:
It’s a little more complex than that. If you want the app on the user device to be able to dump data directly into your online database, you have to give it access in some way. Encrypting the transmission doesn’t do much if every app installation contains access credentials that can be extracted or sniffed.
Obviously there are ways around this too, but it’s not just “use TLS”.
Wouldn’t some sort of proxy in between the bucket and the client app solve this problem? I feel like you could even set up an endpoint on your backend that manages the upload. In other words, why is it necessary for the client app to connect directly with the bucket?
Maybe I’m not understanding the gist of the problem
Exactly, it’s not necessary. It’s bad / lazy design. You don’t expose the DB storage directly, you expose a frontend that handles all the authentication and validation stuff before accessing the DB on the backend. That’s normal Client-Server-Database architecture.
Yeah. You also landed on a correct thought process for security. Cloud providers will let you make datastores public but that’s like handing over a revolver with an unknown number of live chambers and saying “Have fun playing Russian roulette! I hope you win.” Making any datastore public facing, without an API abstraction to control authN and authZ is not just a bad practice, it’s a stupid practice.
Encrypting the transmission doesn’t do much if every app installation contains access credentials that can be extracted or sniffed.
Encrypt the credentials then? Or OAUTH pipeline, perhaps? Automated temporary private key generation for each upload (that sounds unrealistic, to be fair)? Can credentialing be used for intermediary storage that encrypts the data on that server and then decrypted on the database host?
Clearly my utter “noobishness” is showing, but at least it’s triggering a slight urge to casually peruse modern WebSec production workflows. I am but a humble DNNs-for-parametric-CAD-modelling (lots of Linear Algebra, PyTorch, and Grasshopper for Rhino) researcher. Thus, I am far removed from customer-facing production environments, and it shows.
Any recommendations on literature or articles on how engineers solve these problems in a “best practices” way that you can recommend? I suppose I could just look it up, but I thought I’d ask.
You’ve got the right ideas. Noone should ever be storing any password in plaintext. It should always be hashed and the hash stores. That’s like WEBDEV99 (remedial course, not even 101).
Really. Despite your stated “noobishness”, you basically landed in the territory of best practices right of the bat.
If you’re looking for a good source of best practices, the CIS benchmarks are great. https://www.cisecurity.org/
Brother, I need the “remedial” lessons since I self-host a lot of my experimental DNN solutions on a GPU cluster served via CasaOS/Ubuntu-Server LTS.
I’ve followed basic tutorials about nginx, end-to-end encryption, and DNS, but I need more knowledge and training about the theory behind modern security best practices. I think I’m doing okay but I have this ever-present anxiety that I’ve overlooked something and my ass (i.e., sensitive data) is really just hanging out in the wind.
Thank you for your recommendation.
I am not sure, but I read somewhere that the developer(s) used vibe coding to create the app so…
A lot of people have speculated that.
According to their statement their code was written in Feb/2024 and predates “vibe coding”
What intrigue me is this:
I’m confident vibe coding was not to blame in this particular case,
So they used vibe coding, they are only saying that they think/hope that it is not the cause of the break (and maybe also of the second one)
And if vvibe coding is not caused then they are even more incompetent.
Change the target to any other group and the outrage would be 100-10000 fold bigger.
Try it out, instead of Women rating men, try subbing in various minority groups or races.
Bonus points for the most offensive combinations…
e.g. Russians rating Ukrainians in your area…it can get pretty bad…I can think of many worse combos.
I’m sorry but I’ll just say it out right: new feminists are the absolute worst
Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for equality where possible. Where isn’t equality possible? Well I’d like to conceive a child, but the plumbing isn’t exactly useful for that. That sort of thing. Beyond that, were all the same, and IDGAF about your skin color, sexual preferences or whatever. I live by live and Let live, don’t be an asshole, it’s not that hard to be respectful
New feminists though are the ones coming up with ideas like this website. On the surface, anyone could say that it’s not a bad thing to have a place for women to talk about how to protect themselves. In reality though, it’s a place where men, innocent or not, get doxxed and made to be rapists.
There are some subs here on Lemmy as well that were very sad to see this shitshow of a website go, lamenting the fact that now they need a different place to dex people. Try not to tell them that doxxing is bad, it gets you banned.
Might want to read up on the origins of Facebook before turning this into a gender wars thing.
Nothing about gender wars here.
Just because Facebook is shit, doesn’t make this any better.
I think the key reason this was seen as not being terribly offensive was the fact that women are disproportionately more likely than men to be on the receiving end of tons of different negative consequences when dating, thus to a degree justifying them having more of a safe space where their comfort and safety is prioritized.
However I think a lot of people are also recognizing now that such an app has lots of downsides that come as a result of that kind of structure, like false allegations being given too much legitimacy, high amounts of sensitive data storage, negative interactions being blown out of proportion, etc. I also think that this is yet another signature case of “private market solution to systemic problem” that only kind of addresses the symptoms, but not the actual causes of these issues that are rooted more in our societal standards and expectations of the genders, upbringing, depictions in media, etc.
Stats depend on perception. Where a woman reports abuse, a man often spends an evening drinking or something similar. Not reporting abuse.
Expectations of men are too somewhat cruel. You should be grenadier-tall (or gorilla-wide, point being, you should look fit), with facial features like those of Kianu Reeves, with voice like that of Orlando Bloom, confident like some CEO, honorable like a samurai from some movie, yet able to override that honor at her whim and do any atrocity to make the world better for her. Like some picture of 1930s’ propaganda.
If you don’t deliver, then she silently pities herself and silently looks down at you for that. But God forbid you seem like that picture in some regard and then inevitably turn out to be more human, that deceit she won’t forgive.
It was a problem a century ago that women were mostly right-wing and chauvinist and traditionalist. Most of that has been undone, but not how women in average see gender relations.
OK, so about the app - I won’t be surprised if it was an intentional honeypot, honestly, to expose those who will use it. And it’s a bad idea, there’s no way to verify anonymous accusations, which means it’s a tool for defamation of any man, and a way to discredit things of the kind written there at the same time.
These alleged high standards women hold are largely imaginary. It’s only kind of like that on dating apps, and that’s because they’re 80% male, so women HAVE to be picky.
I agree. High standards and common ideas of “right” are generally present among people insecure and easily gaslighted.
Such as those that would use this app. Point?
I’m always reminded of the fact that women on dating sites rate 80% of the men as below average….
And the dating advisors who have written numerous articles about how women don’t really know or aren’t really honest with themselves about what they are looking for in a partner….
That was ONE OKCupid survey from years ago, and it also showed that women were more likely than men to message people they didn’t rate as attractive.
In reality, women and men rate male facial attractiveness about the same. https://datepsychology.com/can-women-identify-an-average-face/
I was making the point, that despite the fact that this is mildly ok. The test for anything that gives one group power over another, is to switch the groups.
If it’s still reasonable, than it is probably OK to keep it. If however it seems wrong after the switch, the bar to keep the power imbalance should be very high.
That’s a very superficial test that deliberately omits the social and historical context that makes sense of these categories. You can’t just insert one party for another in statements about a relationship where one side has more power and privilege than the other, and look at your feelings about the result to evaluate the statements. White people have historically mistreated everyone else and robbed them of freedom and power. Men have historically abused women. To say “let’s swap the words and see how we feel then” is not a reasonable way of evaluating statements about the relationships between these groups.
What this article says about the importance of entrenched power structures in racism also holds true about the relations between men and women:
https://www.aclrc.com/issues/anti-racism/cared/the-basics-level-1/myth-of-reverse-racism/
You can, and do.
It helps set the bar, it is a tool for determining how to assess what level of imbalance is reasonable.
It’s not the only tool, nor an I arguing for it to be.
Russians rating Ukrainians
Interesting analogy. You realize you have it backwards, right? Women are the Ukrainians on this scenario.
Agreed, but it is worse the way I put it…
Tea wasn’t hacked. Tea posted these images to a public file sharing site. Tea claimed that they deleted these images after verifying the applicant was a woman but clearly that was a fraudulent claim.
