As I noted within my post, #[email protected] (alternate link), URL thumbnail generation in Element is an enormous privacy, and security vulnerability. Thumbnails are generated server-side, regardless of E2EE settings. What this means is that the URLs that one sends would be leaked out of your encrypted chats to the server. Here is a notable excerpt from the settings within Element:

In encrypted rooms, like this one, URL previews are disabled by default to ensure that your homeserver (where the previews are generated) cannot gather information about links you see in this room.

Post Edit History

2023-10-02T00:54Z
1c1,2
< As I noted within my post #9955859@lemm.ee ([alternate link](https://lemm.ee/post/9955859)), thumbnail generation in [Element](https://element.io/) is an enormous privacy, and security vulnerability. Thumbnails are generated server-side, regardless of E2EE settings. What this means is that the URLs that one sends would be leaked out of your encrypted chats to the server.
---
> As I noted within my post #9955859@lemm.ee ([alternate link](https://lemm.ee/post/9955859)), thumbnail generation in [Element](https://element.io/) is an enormous privacy, and security vulnerability. Thumbnails are generated server-side, regardless of E2EE settings. What this means is that the URLs that one sends would be leaked out of your encrypted chats to the server. Here is a notable excerpt from the settings within Element:
> > In encrypted rooms, like this one, URL previews are disabled by default to ensure that your homeserver (where the previews are generated) cannot gather information about links you see in this room.

2023-10-02T01:28Z
1,2c1,2
< As I noted within my post #9955859@lemm.ee ([alternate link](https://lemm.ee/post/9955859)), thumbnail generation in [Element](https://element.io/) is an enormous privacy, and security vulnerability. Thumbnails are generated server-side, regardless of E2EE settings. What this means is that the URLs that one sends would be leaked out of your encrypted chats to the server. Here is a notable excerpt from the settings within Element:
< > In encrypted rooms, like this one, URL previews are disabled by default to ensure that your homeserver (where the previews are generated) cannot gather information about links you see in this room. 
---
>  As I noted within my post, #9955859@lemm.ee ([alternate link](https://lemm.ee/post/9955859)), thumbnail generation in [Element](https://element.io/) is an enormous privacy, and security vulnerability. Thumbnails are generated server-side, regardless of E2EE settings. What this means is that the URLs that one sends would be leaked out of your encrypted chats to the server. Here is a notable excerpt from the settings within Element:
> > In encrypted rooms, like this one, URL previews are disabled by default to ensure that your homeserver (where the previews are generated) cannot gather information about links you see in this room.

2023-10-02T03:44Z
1c1
< As I noted within my post, #9955859@lemm.ee ([alternate link](https://lemm.ee/post/9955859)), thumbnail generation in [Element](https://element.io/) is an enormous privacy, and security vulnerability. Thumbnails are generated server-side, regardless of E2EE settings. What this means is that the URLs that one sends would be leaked out of your encrypted chats to the server. Here is a notable excerpt from the settings within Element:
---
> As I noted within my post, #9955859@lemm.ee ([alternate link](https://lemm.ee/post/9955859)), URL thumbnail generation in [Element](https://element.io/) is an enormous privacy, and security vulnerability. Thumbnails are generated server-side, regardless of E2EE settings. What this means is that the URLs that one sends would be leaked out of your encrypted chats to the server. Here is a notable excerpt from the settings within Element:

Post Signature

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Llo93EMtboSUEtYZ+wQhaL/HmrEr6arup7gJzZgslOBWPFj5azADHSpjX9RYuvpt
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0sWcPh3aZLXKqdls6UJMEA==
  • Kalcifer@lemm.eeOP
    121·
    1 year ago

    What is this post signature […] Also, what is the purpose?

    I’m testing out some ideas that I’ve had for my posts – the signature and the edit history. They are a result of the current status of the following two issues on GitHub:

    Recently (as of 2023-10-02T03:28Z), one of the maintainers/developers for Lemmy closed those two issues with either little, or no rationale. I personally think that they are good features. Since it appears that those features are not going to be seamlessly added to Lemmy, I’m trying to see if it is practical to manually add them to posts.

    Regarding the edit history: The purpose of an edit history is to solve the issue of people not knowing what changed in a post when it was edited. The main issue with a user-created, and maintained edit history, however, is its inherent the lack of trust. Its existence increases transparency, but you still have to trust that the user hasn’t lied about what is in the diff. The implementation would be to have the server generate it, but, unfortunately, the dev has removed that possibility for the time being.

    Regarding the signature: The purpose of the signature was a means to ensure censorship resilience from the admins of an instance. As it currently stands, any admin can freely edit the content of a user’s posts, or comments with no one being the wiser. A signature would provide a sort of check against this. If a user signs a post with their own private key, then, by verifying the post’s signature with the user’s public key, one can be certain that that user was the one that wrote it, and not a server admin, or any other external entity. But, again, this feature has been blocked on GitHub.

    The long, and short of it is this is me trying to protest what I think are silly decisions made by the devs of Lemmy.

    how does one use it and create one for their own post?

    The way that I am currently doing it is I take the raw content of the post, or comment (the body, and it’s formatting, including the edits, if they exist, and excluding the signature code block), generate a SHA-256 hash of it, and sign the hash using RSA-2048. For example to sign one’s post’s content, the following could be done:

    1. Put the raw post content into a file, post-content.txt.
    2. Generate an RSA-2048 private key, and output it to a file, private-key.pem:
    openssl genrsa -out private-key.pem 2048
    1. Generate the public key, and put it in a file, public-key.pem:
    openssl rsa -in private-key.pem -pubout public-key.pem
    1. Hash, and sign the content of the post, then output the signature to a file, post-content.sig:
    openssl dgst -sha256 -sign private-key.pem -out  post-content.sig post.txt
    1. To then be able to paste the signature as text, it must be base64-encoded:
    openssl base64 -in post-content.sig -out post-content.sig.b64

    If you would like to verify your signature, you could then do:

    openssl dgst -sha256 -verify public-key.pem -signature post-content.sig post.txt

    If the signature is correct, then it will return Verified OK

    There likely exists other, simpler methods of going about this, but this method is functional.

    content-signature:CEsuKEwcmfYh/3/04OTscm9G/+JNkIoAELQBxqJYe67O6qCbZZ7IuzFjes4yVVW+ntE6807wy0lmt7TU8obFLHGbVrrb+J8M+Qo/qviftMNKAux+7ASWz/z87UOGieOPRlV6PbWzpMBHdF2A5LFLdpS68adQrLNOjb5JalWRYa2vN4L6BO88doirJmHtQ8TQ4mvaNKYe0BD7BdXQkc9pzivKWVmSdZA7avb8QJLDdukgJCRHgjQXKaLnEZHfmSxfG4mUDcK0bw35GmqYLsVlN0nwj1Xdd1A0bl3sgTgCbpkpb9kdQv4L2HINJ1vCy472qG+cnor4Lt6NpdKIhUR35Q==
    • pressanykeynow@iusearchlinux.fyi
      1·
      1 year ago

      Can’t the admins just edit it and sign with a new key? Either way there won’t be a way to know for sure who edited the comment, you could know if the original poster did it, but well they can just tell you that.

      • Kalcifer@lemm.eeOP
        5·
        1 year ago

        Can’t the admins just edit it and sign with a new key?

        Of course, but if the signature were to change, it would no longer match the public key.

        Either way there won’t be a way to know for sure who edited the comment

        The goal is only to know if the OP edited it or not. It doesn’t really matter who edited it if it wasn’t the OP. The only important information would be that it wasn’t the OP.

        but well they can just tell you that.

        Verifying with the user’s public key accomplishes the same, and is independent of a direct audit from the user.

        content-signature:qbUJz7ND/3+S+W0ptyja6zAeT0q7OyzFvJpAOr3iqbbN37+GcdAashDP8QNahRyAwA1X3tm9mh0PePV3VFDaiWzOeSNOQBwrVgnlepu+euG+07WJQT0Env8/vg+Q6qO7tcVN0vp8WGYftF5cjHCkjox2Mcu3dJ1g7ONMh+nJLIhrDTAki4nVLNJuJzznLBZJzohkW3/LBqDMjkPUDq0E3Mdulm6kUpWG8r3ECgxuOjdiHSvUS9yEjOZFpGiBibjQihAlDNqe2Rcx2kCP2H8nhJwclm667KnoinfV52z8v0zNrKlz8PIb6q+whwn6mNkisC02mQwQkStUi4SocZxaAA==
        • hikaru755@feddit.de
          7·
          1 year ago

          How can I find your public key without going through a channel that could also have been manipulated by the admins, though? That seems problematic to me

          • Kalcifer@lemm.eeOP
            3·
            1 year ago

            This is indeed an obstacle in practicality. You are absolutely right in that any channel under control by the admin could be used as a means to orchestrate a MITM attack and replace my public key with theirs. The only way for this to work is for me to personally provide my public key in a separate, and secure channel like Matrix.

            I would like to emphasize that this is all just an experiment for my own interest. I would certainly not recommend what I am doing to anyone else.

            content-signature:nHszcVqN6q4R+QXnem7w42nxw58kNPNV3UGVK/rxBP5QBWNjoHX5WstdcuLWiiuuky0ZwXVR6zif2/+oWwRcmDtbv+FNlBOKSIVfcW1lSOQNQeBddbmBNIfP7hBjtTSVbszIZPXNzJQykEFdxh9hJVaC3eEqxYnN4oIOdxWjj+MejQ2zpG3l/BdnTLqWX3rf4HK4VPD8OMYyxTbqhtTMMje+tfCrf/EtRfgY3gd0Clm6oWw6WeD6QgQdJHgbRlDrZwIVE8F5zdtnooFcIptlo4ovJl9VX7FdBCExRW9MQJUU+3AZv5gVCZ4pZ9zZaXihGmhdNRDbAX9XQVUSSRc+1w==
        • pressanykeynow@iusearchlinux.fyi
          2·
          1 year ago

          The goal is only to know if the OP edited it or not. It doesn’t really matter who edited it if it wasn’t the OP. The only important information would be that it wasn’t the OP.

          OP can edit comment, sign with a different key and claim his comment was edited by the admins.

          So we can’t know who really edited the comment unless in the default boring situation: it was OP and he signed it with the correct key which is the same as him just telling “yeah, it was me” or not saying anything at all since it’s the default.

          • Kalcifer@lemm.eeOP
            1·
            1 year ago

            OP can edit comment, sign with a different key and claim his comment was edited by the admins.

            Dang, that is a scenario that I hadn’t considered. I’m not sure that there’s anything that can be done about it.

            content-signature:h0Iy5AaMSi9fo+LeWpR1hFpbRygi066LKPL7+5aDJ4Y0mf33R8/E+wn9At+N0dvNr8HH1eAghGkpfCbfcoe5NzzcsRMgfl+qSYjrpb4DmN124DLLoFd7q55R/aqXdqqZP+4DaVTLVN5G2MKg5SPL0SMhHxTl6f4BUxhQCWy6PapqwvsG3D59hVQtNlgm4/ab7oo5ORIR+ENV59+rrssNxaNBsKud4rths93SFMCf/si3Uewo0VNCorTb/KUMoZaHv21zmneq5UxZRkqXD3ZR4/H7vDILWArp350OSpZxm69kTJAeBH3VuvYkKunMlouzsxEJqdLDaaApYWwSyyUYLQ==
            • glowie@infosec.pub
              1·
              1 year ago

              Why not just host your own lemmy instance on a cheap vps and be satisfied you’re the only admin heh

              • Kalcifer@lemm.eeOP
                1·
                1 year ago

                Aha, yeah that is also an option. If signatures are possible, it would be less maintenace compared to hosting an instance. Also, I think other instances can still overwrite your data should they choose. It’s just stored data after all – if it’s not inherently tied to the user, then anybody can modify it; having federated servers only increases this attack surface.