this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2024
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  • Web3 developer Brian Guan lost $40,000 after accidentally posting his wallet's secret keys publicly on GitHub, with the funds being drained in just two minutes.
  • The crypto community's reactions were mixed, with some offering support and others mocking Guan's previous comments about developers using AI tools like ChatGPT for coding.
  • This incident highlights ongoing debates about security practices and the role of AI in software development within the crypto community.
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[–] [email protected] 55 points 5 months ago (6 children)

Even though that's a good extra precaution, per person config data, such as keys, should be stored outside of the repo, eg. in the parent directory or better in the users home dir. There is zero reason to have it in the repo. Even if you use a VM/containers, you can add the config in an extra mount/share.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (5 children)

What's the general consensus on storing encrypted data in the repo with the keys outside? I see people recommend that but I'm too paranoid and my secrets are very small in size so it hasn't been necessary.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

the format of the encrypted file can give the attackers an advantage. if your code reads the decrypted file, the attacker can guess the first line is a comment or the name of a setting. a savvy person can combine that with the algorithm to perform a "known plaintext attack", for example by generating a number of possible passwords that would lead to files starting like that.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

That's not quite the definition of known plaintext attack (cryptography nerd here), that's bruteforce with a "crib" to use older terminology (known patterns which allows you to test candidate keys).

A known plaintext attack is defined as an attack on the algorithm to extract the key faster than bruteforce with analytical attacks.

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