bhaney 4 hours ago | next |

There are a lot of major security vulnerabilities in the world that were made understandably, and can be forgiven if they're handled responsibly and fixed.

This is not one of them. In my opinion, this shows a kind of reputation-ruining incompetency that would convince me to never use Arc ever again.

endigma 4 hours ago | root | parent | next |

Also, firebase? seriously? this is a company with like, low level software engineers on payroll, and they are using a CRUD backend in a box. cost effective I guess? I wouldn't even have firebase on the long list for a backend if I were architecting something like this. Especially when feature-parity competitors like Supabase just wrap a normal DBMS and auth model.

aaomidi 4 hours ago | root | parent | prev |

You’d think that a company shipping a browser would pay a little more attention to security rules.

Also, shame on firebase for not making this a bit more idiot proof.

And really? $2500? That’s it? You could’ve owned literally every user of Arc… The NSA would’ve paid a couple more zeros on that.

water-data-dude 3 hours ago | prev | next |

I just wanted to say, I enjoyed the little pixel art cat that runs towards wherever you click immensely. It’s one of those fun, whimsical little touches that I don’t see all that often. A reminder that the internet can be a fun, whimsical place if we want it to be :)

johndough an hour ago | root | parent | next |

On Debian, you can install and run the cat with

    sudo apt install oneko
    oneko &
Makes a great gift for colleagues who leave their computer unattended.

monroewalker 2 hours ago | prev | next |

Can we have Arc added to the title of the post to better alert people who use or know people who use the browser?

ko_pivot 6 hours ago | prev | next |

This is such a fantastic bug. Firebase security rules (like with other BaaS systems like Firebase) have this weird default that is hard to describe. Basically, if I write my own API, I will set the userId of the record (a 'boost' in this case) to the userId from the session, rather than passing it in the request payload. It would never even occur to a developer writing their own API past a certain level of experience to let the client pass (what is supposed to be) their own userId to a protected API route.

On the other hand, with security rules you are trying to imagine every possible misuse of the system regardless of what its programmed use actually is.

nottorp 40 minutes ago | root | parent |

> On the other hand, with security rules you are trying to imagine every possible misuse of the system regardless of what its programmed use actually is.

Tbh you're doing it wrong if you go that way.

Default deny, and then you only have to imagine the legitimate uses.

supriyo-biswas 3 hours ago | prev | next |

Great research. As I've said elsewhere, Firebase's authentication model is inherently broken and causes loads of issues, and people would be better off writing a small microservice or serverless function that fronts Firebase.

Also, for anyone trying to read the article, they should put `/oneko.js` in their adblocker.

Aaron2222 2 hours ago | root | parent |

> Also, for anyone trying to read the article, they should put `/oneko.js` in their adblocker.

Only if you hate cats, pixel art, or are easily distracted.

hunter2_ an hour ago | root | parent | prev |

I suspect it's that they hate are easily distracted (if "hate" falls outside of the series, such that it applies beyond just "cats")!

ahoef an hour ago | prev | next |

Nice article, but this is hard to read without proper capitalization. My brain uses capitals to scan beginning and ending of text.

bestest 37 minutes ago | prev | next |

the developers working with firebase should enforce common-sense document crud restrictions in the rules. that's just how firebase is. everyone knows it.

now, when talking about ARC BROWSER, i am seriously starting to doubt the competence of the team. I mean, if the rules are broken (no tests? no rules whatsoever?), what else is broken with ARC? are we to await a data leak from ARC?

any browser recommendations with proper vertical tabs and basically everything working like it does in ARC?

userbinator 3 hours ago | prev | next |

while researching, i saw some data being sent over to the server, like this query everytime you visit a site

I'm not surprised in the least --- basically the vast majority of software these days is spyware. Looking at Arc's privacy page, it appears to be mainly marketing fluff similar to what I've seen from other companies. I have yet to find a privacy policy that says frankly "we only know your IP and time you downloaded the software, for the few weeks before the server logs are overwritten."