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Comment by nwah1 | Hacker News Reader

"Disclosure" could mean many things. The idea of providing the info directly via email to the affected user seems to adequately disclose things to the relevant parties.

Are there additional benefits of the public api that on balance benefit the public more than attackers?

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Yeah, the availability of the data being common rather than rare, so the skill of collecting that data doesn't create a power structure where only the hackers/skilled users have power.

Imagine it being $500/month to access HIBP, because that's the alternative, not some, "everyone agrees to only use this info for good".

Explain to me how anybody besides myself can use info about my leaked account for something good or useful.

I can’t think of an example.

Therefore, having that info cost more is better. Having it cost a lot more is a lot better. (I’m assuming I can still get access for free by having provided directly to my email address.)

A service provider could check the API for the signup email and if previously compromised could challenge the signup with additional CAPTCHA steps to detect bot activity. They could check email+PW entered against leaked pairs and prevent you from registering with a known-compromised PW.

Your bank could check emails attached to customer accounts and work with affected customers to ensure their bank account access is secure.

You employer could check for leaks of accounts using corporate domains. They could check leaked passwords against known last 5 to see if there are active threats.

What? No, you're not understanding. Even if no one but you could use this info legitimately, the fact that it's widely available depowers the people who have the skills to collect it (specifically, people who want to do you harm).

By virtue of the fact that this info is widespread, you have no choice but to take actions to protect yourself from this information. That means the information becomes useless.

You are, in a way, being shamed into acting, through public disclosure. So no, having that info cost is not more better, it's more worse.

Furthermore, it is not an option to only let you have this information. That ship sailed when the breaches happened. You don't get access to this information for free, you don't get to control the dissemination of this information, you are powerless. You're acting like HIBP is the only way people can find this info out; it's not. That $500 price tag is just for you. People who are more skilled than you or I at collecting this info get it for free, and that's never going away.

You can’t have it both ways. Either it’s widely available, or it isn’t.

If it’s already widely available then HIBP doesn’t accomplish anything. (It doesn’t anyway, since it doesn’t “shame” anybody except people who are already signed up, who only need and get their own info.) If it isn’t widely available then HIBP is helping people who are bad at collecting and using this information to do so.

We accept that from bug reports only because of the other benefits that come from releasing the info.

You're not getting that the alternative is much worse.

Your data is out there. Period. The end. You don't have control over that. All you're doing is trying to re-establish control over data you already lost.

The question now is, do you want it only in the hands of people who want to harm you, or do you want it in the hands of both people who want to harm you as well as people who want to help you?

You seem to only want bad guys to have your data. That's weird.

Thanks for the explanation. I get your point now. I did not find BFDM’s proposed benefits from white hats having access to be compelling. So what I’m struggling with is simply the idea that anybody could do something good with my data. If only bad can be done, then the fewer people spreading the data around, the better. Your presupposition is that some people will do good with it if they have access that currently only bad people have. Can you give an example of one of some of those good things?

1Password tells you which of your passwords have been part of a breach. Many other companies will suspend the accounts of anyone whose login information to their leaked as part of another site's breach.

Other websites won't allow you to use a password that's listed as a common password from the aggregated passwords in breaches.

Lots of studies have been done on password frequency, such as the top 100 most common passwords and what security people can do about their repeated use.

Based on your question however, I'm concerned you don't actually get my point. You're being forced into action, exactly how companies are forced into action, by the availability of this information. You have to change your password if it's easily available to anyone who uses this API and who has your email address, you no longer get to pretend it's not a big deal.

> 1Password tells you...

This is software acting as an agent of the effected user. 1Password could be authorized by the email holder to gain access to the API without making the information public.

> Other websites won't allow you to use...

This and the following example in your comment are discussing the breached password API, which is a completely different API that I specifically mentioned up-front as not compromising any PII.

I take zero issue with providing an API to see counts of how many times a password has shown up on breach lists, although I wouldn't use the API myself on any of my own passwords, because it leaks a 1-in-1-million discriminator to the actual password you are querying.

You don't get to take issue with any of this. Your information was already stolen! You have no say, the end.

So your fallback position is that it is perfectly legitimate to traffic in stolen PII. Got it.

Well, I take issue with that.

Yes, in some cases it's perfectly legitimate to "traffic" (terrible word choice) in stolen PII, that is correct.

And my "fallback" position is that it's better this way than the other way, where it's actually being trafficked, rather than your hyperbolic assertion that it is now.

Now apply this same thinking to the Equifax breach and millions of credit reports.

Now apply this same thinking to the OPM breach and security clearances.

Now apply this same thinking to medical records breaches.

I don't want anyone to have my data, but I resign myself to the fact that data security is, and never will be perfect. That does not mean I resign myself to the fact that all my personal data should be freely available to the entire world via a well documented REST API.

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