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Matthew Green Profile picture
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29 Oct, 6 tweets, 2 min read
“Hard drive”? You mean Dropbox, Overleaf, Github and Google Drive, right? I’m sure they’ll all keep my data forever.
Fortunately I’m clever and I’ve checked my Dropbox into Github.
I keep every academic project since 2003 in a directory named src2/. Why src2? Because six years and three laptops ago I somehow corrupted src/ and was afraid to overwrite it. In 2025 I anticipate an upgrade to src3/.
There’s some weird unfinished stuff in src2/. Image
This one was supposed to be an April fool’s joke, I think? Image
I really wish we’d finished this one. Image

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More from @matthew_d_green

Matthew Green Profile picture
25 Oct
Imagine creating a social media company and rigging the stock so nobody can ever depose you, and then *not* creating a giant candy factory staffed with weird and magical helpers.
Whenever I read about the exploits of Zuck I’m like SMH that’s what people who actually worry about their jobs do, you dumbass.
“Oh no, promoting voter info might make idiots think my company is politically biased, then we’d have a 4% drop in weekly engagement…”

Seriously, you could invent chewing gum that never loses its flavor and this is what you choose. Image
Read 4 tweets
Matthew Green Profile picture
25 Oct
Yes, moderation is going to be harder in end-to-end encrypted spaces. You know what else is going to be harder? Algorithm-driven content amplification. And trust me, one of these things is doing way more damage.
The thing about end-to-end encryption (E2EE) is that it’s absolutely tractable to moderate conversations *if* participants report problems. This voluntary reporting capability is already baked into some systems through “message franking” 1/
So when we say “moderation of E2EE conversations is hard” we’re basically saying “moderation is hard if we’re talking about small(ish) closed groups where not one single participant hits the ‘report abuse’ button.” 2/
Read 10 tweets
Matthew Green Profile picture
24 Oct
I don’t know what to make of the accusations re: Chrome logins in the revised antitrust complaint against Google, but I’m now really looking forward to learning more.
A few years back, Google activated a feature that would automatically log you into the Chrome browser anytime you logged into a Google site. This made it basically impossible to be logged out of Chrome if you used Google accounts.
The Chrome engineers said that they had to do this because users with multiple accounts were getting confused — apparently the idea that some people might not want Chrome to be logged in was not contemplated.
Read 6 tweets
Matthew Green Profile picture
21 Oct
My students have abandoned the lab and may never go back. Image
Every now and then I send one of the faster ones in for white board markers, not because I need them but because it’s super funny.
(This is a joke, by the way. You always need more whiteboard markers.)
Read 8 tweets
Matthew Green Profile picture
15 Oct
Twitter is being sued over the Saudi spies they hired in customer service and SRE roles, the ones who used their access to collect information on Saudi dissidents. protocol.com/bulletins/saud…
A bunch of people have been telling me that it’s ok to relax end-to-end encryption to fight crime, as long as there are protections and data never leaves the company. Stuff like shows why it’s not. Image
“But this was an isolated incident!” Or alternatively, maybe being caught was the isolated incident. How many companies (startups, particularly) have internal controls sufficient to withstand even devops folks with admin credentials?
Read 4 tweets
Matthew Green Profile picture
30 Sep
The NSA guidelines for configuring VPNs continue to require IPsec for VPNs rather than WireGuard. I understand why this is (too much DJB cryptography in WireGuard) but IPsec is really a terrible mess of a protocol, which makes this bad advice. media.defense.gov/2020/Jul/02/20…
The number of footguns in IPsec is really high, and they mostly express themselves in terms of implementation errors in VPN devices/software. It’s these implementation errors that risk private data, not some abstract concern about cipher cryptanalysis.
To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with DJB cryptography. The problem here is that the NSA only approves a very specific list of algorithms (see attached) and that list hasn’t been updated since 2016. It doesn’t even list SHA-3 yet! cnss.gov/CNSS/openDoc.c…
Read 4 tweets

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