Items tagged security, thomasptacek
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Macaroons Escalated Quickly (via) Thomas Ptacek’s follow-up on Macaroon tokens, based on a two year project to implement them at Fly.io. The way they let end users calculate new signed tokens with additional limitations applied to them (“caveats” in Macaroon terminology) is fascinating, and allows for some very creative solutions. # 31st January 2024, 4:57 pm
SOC2 is about the security of the company, not the company’s products. A SOC2 audit would tell you something about whether the customer support team could pop a shell on production machines; it wouldn’t tell you anything about whether an attacker could pop a shell with a SQL Injection vulnerability.
— Thomas Ptacek # 7th July 2022, 8:31 pm
API Tokens: A Tedious Survey. Thomas Ptacek reviews different approaches to implementing secure API tokens, from simple random strings stored in a database through various categories of signed token to exotic formats like Macaroons and Biscuits, both new to me.
Macaroons carry a signed list of restrictions with them, but combine it with a mechanism where a client can add their own additional restrictions, sign the combination and pass the token on to someone else.
Biscuits are similar, but “embed Datalog programs to evaluate whether a token allows an operation”. # 25th August 2021, 12:12 am
Sandboxing and Workload Isolation (via) Fly.io run other people’s code in containers, so workload isolation is a Big Deal for them. This blog post goes deep into the history of isolation and the various different approaches you can take, and fills me with confidence that the team at Fly.io know their stuff. I got to the bottom and found it had been written by Thomas Ptacek, which didn’t surprise me in the slightest. # 30th July 2020, 10:19 pm
A Roundup Of Leopard Security Features (via) Thomas Ptacek’s overview of the new security features in Leopard. Guest Accounts are worthless from a security P.O.V., but I still plan to use one for our PowerBook that’s now just a media player. # 31st October 2007, 5:30 pm