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Comment by frenck | Hacker News Reader

Frenck here, I'm the one who replied on that issue.

My replies there were more dismissive than they should have been. My apologies. I've posted a follow-up on the issue.

As it turns out, the check can already be turned off after all:

  ha security options --pwned=false

It has been part of the Supervisor for years and checks app options that are marked as passwords. A recent release fixed the warning that surfaces it, which is why people are noticing it now.

Only the first 5 characters of a SHA-1 hash go to HIBP, and the matching happens locally: https://github.com/home-assistant/supervisor/blob/main/super...

Our documentation should have explained all of this, including how to turn it off. We'll get that updated.

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I do get the sense that you're not malicious, just that maybe you're not seeing this from the standpoint of someone that assigns a higher value to some elements of privacy. In this case, your user base expects a home automation system. They do not expect that system to scan their computer for passwords, regardless of how "safely" the home automation system were to behave.

You might have a heart of gold, and just be having an off day due to reasons, so I hope people cut you some slack, but if I were you I'd update this feature to be opt-in and conspicuous, immediately

I've not seen the claim that it is scanning their computer for passwords. My understanding is the ones it checks are those that are used in HA's config (I assume, for different devices it connects to in your home).

There are a lot of problems with poor security practices devices of this type. Maybe the feature is a bit too paternalistic but it is not malicious.

I still agree its not the right default but thats quite a lot less invasive than you are making it sound.

My concern is Supervisor runs the operating system for the computer Nabu Casa sold me to run HAOS.

In the off chance Supervisor inadvertently revealed the first 5-characters of my password hash to something else on or off my network over the years, I’m now going to spend a weekend reinstalling a fresh copy of HAOS, blocking it from Internet access until I can run the command to disable this, issuing new passwords and accounts to my household, and resetting the passwords for all my devices and integrations, then restoring all my automations.

Better documentation will definitely help restore confidence, but good practice for me to cycle all my passwords and tighten network policies anyways.

That’s an overreaction.

I'm aware, but like I said, still good practice for me.

To me, everyone swearing off HA over this is overreacting.

It's the first 5 chars of the SHA, nto first 5 chars of the PW - this is a common pattern and how all HIBP integrations work (including the ones built into all major password managers nowadays).

The first 5 characters of the SHA of the password, which is totally, vastly different than the first 5 of the password itself

Security issues rarely arise from explicitly malicious behavior. It's usually careless attitudes until the holes in the swiss cheese align

in defense of frenck, this is actually a very secure way to perform the task. swiss cheese alignment won't happen because of this

however

it's also a feature transmitting information in a product that bills itself as being offline. imo it's a (minor) privacy violation, not a security violation.

It's a trust violation.

Yes, that is different than a security violation. This is a privacy (trust) violation.

> swiss cheese alignment won't happen because of this

This is the problem. You do not know what you do not know. There have already been papers written about the problems with HIBP. You don't have to understand the threat model for it to exist.

Actually, I do :)

The papers written about HIBP, one of which I contributed to, address some actual problems. but this isn’t one of them

How is a provably anonymous operation a violation of privacy?

I value my privacy quite highly, but I don't mind harmless, anonymous use of my data

Even sending out a request to a third party server without any input by the user or good reason (which I wouldn’t count this as) should be counted as a privacy violation because HIBP can now infer that network is running HA.

Wait, how? It's not like it's the only app doing this, and I would assume it's not signing it's requests?

By a virtue of the fact that each and every server logs all packets 24/7 nowadays. For example, if you run a port scanner over a million different IP addresses, and one of them happens to be mine, then in my logs there is your IP now.

Yes, but how do you go from "I got pinged by this IP" to "this network is running HA, and not one of a dozen of other tools that tend to ping this IP"?

The claim wasn't that they have the IP address - that's useless on it's own. The claim was that this somehow establishes it as an HA account

That's not how privacy works. I don't care what you mind or consider harmless, no tool should be scanning the file system for anything without explicit consent and permission.

Making such a behavior opt-out is malicious, intentionally or not. --pwned=false? Give me a fucking break, so you're pwned by default then. Unbelievable what some developers think they can get away with.

Did it scan the file system? Or did users hand over the passwords as part of the application? Because everything else makes it sound like the latter.

The site is called "Have I Been Pwned", thus the cutesy name of the flag...

Perhaps it scans a database and not the file system, but either way, if I see an application gathering passwords and sending remote requests to an unauthorized third party "pwnedpasswords.com" (literally) without my explicit command to do so, then it is acting maliciously by design.

It's a password management system - it's not "gathering" passwords, it is being explicitly given passwords by the user. This is a very important difference! The entire point of the application is that you give it your passwords and it keeps them secure.

The designer felt that "secure" included "is this password already published, online, in a known database breach", which is not an unreasonable interpretation.

The documentation has been clarified. There was a a feature flag. Calling this malicious is just absurd flame-bait.

I understand you're OK with a password managing application making remote requests to a third party without your permission or consent. For me it's unacceptable and unforgivable. We have differing opinions.

My whole point is that this should be "differing opinions" and not "moral condemnation". It's not a mere "difference of opinion" if you consider something unacceptable and unforgivable, or act entitled towards the maintainers of a free, open-source program that doesn't conform to your "opinions."

Home assistant is not a password management system. It's a home automation system. The fact that they added password management features into it does not change what it is. Is your email client a password management system because you enter your password into it?

It wasn't malicious but it wasn't expected.

Depending on how it's batched, this tells HIBP (and any MITM -- even one that can only see ciphertext) roughly how many unique passwords you use. Knowing the 5-character hash prefix also cuts down brute force attacks by a factor of a million -- though in practice this is only a real issue if you use one of the compromised passwords (there's only a few hundred candidates per prefix), in which case you're kind of screwed already because they're probably in dictionaries anyway.

I don't think these are /critical/ issues and the latter is basically just an argument against the HIBP service, but the point is that a user should opt-in to sharing their data in cases like this so they have a chance to make an informed decision. The k-anonymity design of the HIBP service has a degree of anonymity, it's not "provably anonymous" like homomorphic encryption or similar schemes would be.

Does it actually batch them in an identifying way?

Is there any realistic value to knowing "how many unique passwords you use"? If you already have one of my passwords compromised, you'd presumably try it on the rest of my accounts regardless?

My browser fingerprint leaks, what, thousands of times more information than that - surely fixing applications like Chrome to have sensible privacy-preserving opt-in-only behavior is vastly more important than nagging some obscure open source software about an edge case that can barely be exploited?

By "batching" I was referring to whether they deduplicate requests -- if they do one HTTP request for every password then you get some extra information about how passwords are shared that you would have to infer otherwise.

If you know someone with N logins has N passwords it's a decent indication they use a password manager and so passwords are unlikely to be weak, if they have 1 password it's probably shared elsewhere and weak.

I also wasn't responding to a question asking about practical exploits, I was responding to a question that claimed the k-anonymity model is "provably anonymous" and "harmless". Since it clearly leaks some information it's definitely not the former and one could argue it's not the later though the "harm" is minimal.

> My browser fingerprint leaks, what, thousands of times more information than that - surely fixing applications like Chrome ...

I fail to see how the privacy nightmare of modern browsers is relevant to a discussion on whether opt-out signalling to third-party services is a reasonable stance for an open source project? By that metric no privacy bug is worth reporting because Chrome continues to exist. If only there was a term for this kind of non-sequitur...

If you want to claim something is harmful, you have to actually demonstrate that harm. Otherwise your claim is merely that it could be harmful, which is by default true of basically everything, and thus not a very interesting point.

"Leaks information" is perfectly compatible with "provably anonymous"

You have to prove that the leak is enough to actually de-anonymize someone to disprove anonymity.

I'm not saying it can't be done, but you're jumping ahead and skipping a very important step.

The use isn't anonymous, it sends your IP address to a third party, a personally identifying piece of information.

This is fundamental feature of all traffic sent via IP unfortunately.

Okay, but (a) it's a well known, trusted service and (b) yeah, my browser does that every time I visit a site but no one seems to freak out about that. Like... an IP address by itself is useless, and it's being handed to a trusted party anyway...

>my browser does that every time I visit a site

The purpose of a browser is to make network requests. If I use a browser, I am implicitly giving it consent to make the network requests necessary for the web browsing I do.

This implied consent does not cover unnecessary requests, e.g. the adverts Firefox displays on new tabs by default are unacceptable, because I did not consent to them being downloaded. It also does not cover the network requests made by opening the "Extensions and Themes" menu, because merely looking at a configuration menu does not imply consent to make network requests.

But that fact that modern web browsers are a privacy disaster does not excuse bad behavior from other software.

It's not just a home automation system though. People setup HA for a lot of reasons, but one of them is that they don't want other people/companies in control of what goes on in their home, spying on them, etc. The sort of people who go to the trouble to set up a server, deal with all of the integration issues, etc so that they can get something that they have control over of.

Anyhow that sort of person might not take kindly to having a hash of their password sent to some random web server without being asked first.

Trust is hard won and easily lost. The entire reason I use Home Assistant is because I trust it to be the local, privacy focused home automation system. Things like this is a huge surprise that gives me pause to wonder what else it's doing that I wouldn't approve of. If I feel like I need to start setting up firewalls between HA and my internet to protect my privacy and data, I'm more likely to look towards alternatives and push my family members towards something else as well. This is the first time I've wondered if the project's ethics and culture matches what I expect out of the software.

Just my $0.02.

Just to add to your point, I’ve deliberately avoided home-assistant since this kerfuffle where frenck was quite rude to the NixOS maintainers. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27505277

Ouch, what a painful read.

I avoided HA due to some technical issues published and the further development, but that quote absolutely cemented the decision in me:

> It made me decide to request for complete removal. > I suggest you honor that request and sit on your wounds.

What a.... colourful persona! I wonder if he was alluding to the potential and baseless C&D request or his opinion that one person's wish revokes MIT licence just because.

But..... That's quite painful to read.

That's a very bad look. Both of these incidents make me happy I haven't implemented Home Assistant yet, I'll look for something else.

I've been considering home assistant, and yeah this gives me pause.

IMHO it's just not the kind of behavior that is expected by the people that use the software.

The fact that it didn't occur to anyone that this isn't a good idea makes me question other design decisions. When local-only isn't local-only, that's a problem.

Yeah.

Seeing this, I don't think I'm going to set up Home Assistant any time soon.

Hey dude, I don't get the sense you're being malicious, but you might want to consider the following...

I'm a Home Assistant user because I don't like my devices reaching out to random cloud services more than they need to. I suspect quite a number of fellow HA users feel similarly.

Although your intent was probably good, this feature certainly falls into the "more than they need to" bucket and feels hella icky. And yes, I'm very familiar with HIBP and cryptography in general. This simply isn't an opt-out feature I expect in a privacy positioned home automation product.

Hey, how many opt-out features like this violate the openhome foundation supposed privacy stance ?

https://www.openhomefoundation.org/papers/privacy/

    Cloud-optional: Any functionality that requires data or control signals to leave your home must be transparently explained, opt-in by default via a simple workflow

That's the point right there, it feels like people who wrote that and people who added this "feature" are not the same people (any more).

Asking basically the same thing as the sibling replies, but hopefully in a less aggressive way: can you elaborate on what led you to reply like that in the first place? As someone with no horse in the race (I don't use Home Assistant), the first reply you gave genuinely does seem like it was intended in good faith, even if it was not satisfying to the user, and I can understand that angry users are not fun to interact with, but I'm struggling to wrap my head around why your second reply was "This issue is closed as won't fix" without any elaboration about why. The explanation that seems most likely to me is that you were annoyed at the user and decided not to spend any time looking into the issue, which would be unfortunate but maybe understandable if that's what you're apologizing for. Without any explanation about why you quickly dismissed and then suddenly turned around and changed your mind later though, I think you've risked the apology coming across more as damage control than genuine regret.

> Our documentation should have explained all of this, including how to turn it off. We'll get that updated.

Do you mean "how to turn it ON"? It should be off by default, just look at the replies you're getting by people that are seriously considering not using HA because of this. Is it worth it? It doesn't matter if it's secure by your standards, what matters is that it gives people the security "ick" and will then second-guess every other security decision in the rest of the software. That matters.

"You can just opt out" is the worst possible response for something the user doesn't want, and didn't know about in the first place.

[flagged]

Not a lie, but I was wrong on that one. I'm happy to admit that.

I've used 1Password's Watchtower for so many years that I assumed the breached password check was just part of it. After your reply I looked it up and learned it's actually a setting in their privacy preferences, so my comparison was off.

../Frenck

From my understanding, they seem to be under a lot of stress/pressure lately.

I'm not exactly sure why, but the stuff that happens tells that story (to me at least).

Barking at frenck on a Friday at 11.30PM like this is probably not the right thing to do.

Hehe not really. I'm also just enjoying my hobby on a Saturday evening honestly :)

But you are right, it is time to head downstairs for a beer with Mrs. Frenck.

../Frenck

good bye

Cheers. Same. (well, not with mrs frenck- that'd be scandalous!)

People accusing others of lying all the time is a major problem in current societal discourse.

It’s not a lie if the speaker believes it to be true; it’s just a mistake. A lie must have the intention to mislead behind it.

I don’t dispute that there is a lot of, perhaps way more, lying going on, especially in politics now, but let’s not both inflame opinions and cheapen the word ‘lie’ by just using it for non-deliberate falsehoods.

> It’s not a lie if the speaker believes it to be true

I'm looking forward to that latest Elizabeth Holmes documentary.

"It's not a lie if you believe it." -George Costanza

It's really not so hard to either install 1Password afresh and check, or to check the documentation.

I would give them the benefit of the doubt but it's pretty clear from the initial response on github that privacy or security decisions of users do not matter much.

As someone reading this with no dog in the fight, you came across as rude and patronizing. I'm sure you are not like that in real life, but those responses were ..ooof, not pleasant.

I'm just a rando stranger, don't mean to pile on to you. But as someone that has also launched products and talk to customers every day.. that's not a good look.

Again, no hate here, I'm sure you're great to talk to in real life, but just the way you wrote that was not pleasant at all.

> Only the first 5 characters of a SHA-1 hash go to HIBP

Some would consider the first five characters being sent over the internet to be 'your secret leaving your system'.

Some would consider phoning home to a remote server to be worrisome. It's home assistant not cloud assistant.

I would consider a single byte sent to any server without my explicit permission a breach of trust.

If I were setting up HA it is exactly because I don't want the shenanigans of Google Home and Alexa.

Seeing this, I don't think I'm going to touch it. Alexa might be more respectful of user data.

It is already enough to prove the existence of a password or that another password is not disclosed for example.

Hey Frenck, longtime HA user here. I know this feature feels pretty safe but I hope you can give http://cablej.io/blog/k-anonymity/ a read on how this ultimately still puts trust in HIBP, a third party cloud service. In my opinion this might help with understanding why people are rightfully worried, especially when they thought they are running a very local and private HA instance.

It was far beyond “more dismissive than they should have been”.

And I believe it is far less than what could be.

Too many OSS projects die because authors are too afraid to tell demanding users in which direction they could proceed and instead burn out.

You should fix your fabrication in the 1st response. I have deployed 1Password in my organisation, and I'm also using it personally, and the "Check for vulnerable passwords" option (under Privacy) is opt in.

By suggesting that 1Password is doing the same you're lying to water down the gross abuse of trust.

"my replies were dismissive" non-apology after the initial "This issue is closed as won't fix." show pretty clear you're simply in the damage control mode, actually either not understanding or not caring why someone caring about security or privacy would be shocked and request opt-in you flatly rejected anyway.

Thanks for being here. Who made the decision to enable this by default without consent and without a GUI setting to disable it?

> My replies there were more dismissive than they should have been.

What would have been an appropriate amount of dismissiveness in your view?

Maybe consider HIBP’s offline tool as the default?

https://haveibeenpwned.com/Passwords (“Download & Integrate”)

> My replies there were more dismissive than they should have been. My apologies.

I’m curious what made you change your mind, perhaps seeing this getting traction on hn?

I can’t speak for him, but I regularly reword replies after a minute of consideration or if I manage to think to myself “is this as kind as I intend to be to others” during it’s formation.

He posted a couple of replies and closed the issue, then this thread was posted and he went back and posted an apology and the fix.

Where's the fix?

I don't understand why this is a hill to aggressively die on.

let me get this straight, the complaining user had "--pwned=true"? that option could be better named in my opinion.

> My apologies

You shouldn't have to apology to anyone.

>As it turns out, the check can already be turned off

Problem solved!

>My replies there were more dismissive than they should have been

What about this one?

Problem is not solved. Why was this turned on by default behind our backs? What else is being contacted and with what purpose behind our backs? This is a serious breach of trust from Home Assistant.

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