YHK - yet another hacker news clone

I never authorized an integration that scans my secrets

92 points trvrprkr 1 hour ago 42 comments

TavsiE9s 59 minutes ago | parent

Tough one. I get the intention but this should've been opt-in.

l-albertovich 59 minutes ago | parent

And that kids is a clear example of how not to interact with people online.

zephyreon 57 minutes ago | parent

Yeah not a good look. This is probably the worst way to handle community feedback.

l-albertovich 41 minutes ago | parent

I mean, none of them behaved like an adult.

It's pretty clear that the maintainer should've handled it better but I'd be lying if I said I never felt like telling a petulant user off. The problem is he didn't handle it professionally.

gvfsa 26 minutes ago | parent

Maybe he shouldn’t be accessing people’s passwords. If you start looking into someone’s wallet you can expect an abrasive response.

l-albertovich 15 minutes ago | parent

Well, I didn't check the git history so I can't confirm or deny that he implemented the feature, in any case, if you read the comment about how the passwords are anonymized it sounds pretty reasonable.

Leaving that aside, even if you diagree with it you (the user) are not entitled to anything, especially not entitled to have an attitude.

Just think about it differently, what do you think would happen if you do the same in the real world?

I'm pretty sure in the best case scenario you may be asked to leave and in the worst case scenario you may be "escorted" out of the premises.

A little bit of politeness goes a long way.

ragall 19 minutes ago | parent

The developer's reply was very reasonable and measured. The user, on the other hand, was very rude.

eur0pa 57 minutes ago | parent

Awfully tone deaf responses

onionisafruit 57 minutes ago | parent

I have another tab open where I am about to buy a home assistant green and start a journey of probably-pointless automations. This is giving me pause. Not about sending hashes to haveibeenpwned, but about the response this got on github.

flanz_10 53 minutes ago | parent

> If this is all reason for you to uninstall and fork... So be it, it is open source after all.

what a petty answer. "just fork it bro".

flapperdeflip 23 minutes ago | parent

Working on a fork already: Lets spend some tokens! :)

jackpepsi 49 minutes ago | parent

You may find this unasked for scan humiliating, but we can mathematically prove we're not humiliating you. Any feelings of discomfort or humiliation are therefore invalid and should be set aside.

Edit: I'm sure a greater good argument can be made. I just don't think they are making it in a way that justifies the invasiveness.

janice1999 48 minutes ago | parent

Toxic developers turned me off Home Assistant. The same developer is the star of this issue: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/126326

Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27505277

netsharc 21 minutes ago | parent

Hah, his profile sure has a lot of bullshit about being human and positivity...

Rygian 46 minutes ago | parent

I wouldn't be surprised if that integration is outright illegal in EU due to GDPR, thus putting HIBP in trouble for ingesting PII without any legal legitimacy.

And the first reply being "It is not an invasion of privacy" just shows incompetence on privacy topics. It is never a valid answer.

Which is really concerning, for the lead developer of a home automation system that "fights for the fundamental principle of privacy" as per their mission statement.

nicce 20 minutes ago | parent

I am curious thought that how it would be illegal according to GDPR. They are hashed after all, and the same hash is not used for authentication.

Matticus_Rex 17 minutes ago | parent

It's certainly an overstep, but just the hash they're sending wouldn't be PII.

deadbunny 13 minutes ago | parent

What PII do you think is being sent to HIBP?

altairprime 43 minutes ago | parent

(For missing context from this bare link to an issue with no context provided by the submitter — Home Assistant apparently integrated the same Have I Been Pwned safe scanning process that many other password managers have.)

I have a great deal of sympathy for them refusing to engage; decisive software creators are far less palatable to an entitled swarm of disagreement, and that same decisiveness is what makes the best software. Perhaps in U.S. culture, refusal with a smile and a reassurance that “We’re Listening” is something folks feel entitled to, but in other areas of the world, demanding a stranger change their mind once it’s made up earns only mockery or pity. To those cultures, this GitHub is a comedy-farce, and I laughed out loud upon reading it — not because I necessarily agree with the project’s decision, but because I agree culturally with their tone and handling of what some view as blatant immaturity: a final flat refusal, closing the door, and getting back to work.

interf4ce 42 minutes ago | parent

It sounds like the dev's reason for rejecting the issue is that the issue was opened on the documentation repo rather than the code repo.

On the one hand, it's understandable. No amount of documentation changes will fix the issue.

On the other hand, it's a pretty abrasive response. It wouldn't have taken any more effort to be a little more helpful and direct OP to the right repo: "Sorry, this is the wrong place for this to be addressed. Please bring it up here instead [link]."

mcmcmc 10 minutes ago | parent

[delayed]

csoghoian 41 minutes ago | parent

Giving the home assistant core developers the benefit of the doubt, I am sure there are good intentions here. But if they are interested in adding new security features, adding support for phishing-resistant multi factor authentication (passkeys) would be much more valuable. Users have been asking for it for some time, and even submitted patches, which were rejected.

balloob 40 minutes ago | parent

This feature has been around for 5 years... https://github.com/home-assistant/home-assistant.io/blob/cur...

janice1999 37 minutes ago | parent

That makes it even worse. A leak is still a leak even when you haven't notice it. Personally I use HIBP but I would still be annoyed to learn a system I installed mainly for privacy was sending private data to a third party by default.

flapperdeflip 32 minutes ago | parent

The feature is not the problem.

Cameri 39 minutes ago | parent

The dev comes as self-serving. Not what you’d expect to see. Calls it heated when he himself caused it with their tone deaf response… it’s next level.

csnover 34 minutes ago | parent

> The dev comes as self-serving

What, do you not include links to every single one of your social media accounts in every single post you make on GitHub? I think this is a very cool and normal thing, and not a concerning red flag about narcissistic tendencies at all.

deadbunny 25 minutes ago | parent

The same dev doesn't even like others packaging his open source libs.

https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/pull/126326

frenck 32 minutes ago | parent

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.

doobiedowner 24 minutes ago | parent

>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?

5kyl4b 15 minutes ago | parent

why lying on your first reply? you mentioned 1Password did the same, in an attempt to make yourself "less guilty", but you failed to realize 1Password doesn't enable that option automatically without consent, and in some cases this option is periodically DISABLED automatically. address this, please, it's pretty embarrassing to lie like this just to cover y'all's ass.

frenck 11 minutes ago | parent

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

hypfer 8 minutes ago | parent

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.

frenck 6 minutes ago | parent

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

philipwhiuk 13 minutes ago | parent

> 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.

saghm 6 minutes ago | parent

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.

omega3 5 minutes ago | parent

> 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?

TZubiri 25 minutes ago | parent

>>please let us know so we can uninstall and fork

>Sorry, these are not statements we can work with. Doing such threats and trying to intimidate it not going to bring you anywhere. If you want to do a

just wanted to add an outsider perspective here, not trying to add wood to the fire

but i don’t think it’s inappropriate or ‘a threat’ to let the dev know the user can stop using the software.

dpark 13 minutes ago | parent

Is it inappropriate? Not really. Is it a threat? Yeah, it really is. “I’m going to stop using your software if you don’t change this” is a threat. “I’m going to fork it and ship a competing product” is a stronger threat.

It was a clear attempt to sway with intimidation. It was done politely but that doesn’t change what it was. (The dev had already closed as won’t fix, too, so they had preemptively answered.)

abletonlive 20 minutes ago | parent

Here we have the classic if you want something to happen in the corporate world, make it go viral on the internet. Except, humans will be humans and it played out in open source.

In this case, frenck most certainly backtracked because they realized they were on the front page of HN and did not want the heat.

thunderfork 10 minutes ago | parent

So, wait, these are secrets that are already given to h-a, hashed, and just the first five characters of the hash sent up..?

Yeah, I agree with the maintainer, this strikes me as outrage theater over any actual problem, no?