Publications Alternatives

publications reviews and mentions

• Skiff: Various Privacy Failures
  4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 14 Jan 2024

  Disagree, their reputation is tied to their audit quality.

  But I'm pretty sure in this case the scope was bad. Like they coukd have had audits on "Do I use OpenSSL well?" and then misrepresent that all their privacy claims were audited.

  Now it seems like Skiff conveniently didn't allow Trail of Bits to publish their reports, they are usually here: https://github.com/trailofbits/publications/tree/master/revi...

  Disclaimer, I have used Trail of Bits service in the past (and 2 other auditors for an security campaign on a blockchain, cryptography + networking product).

• Thoughts on Skiff? What do you like? What would you want to see improve?
  2 projects | /r/privacy | 3 Jul 2023

  Audits are mentioned on the Trail of Bits website https://github.com/trailofbits/publications and the Skiff one https://skiff.com/transparency. Skiff has been externally audited 4 times.

• SimpleX Chat: private and secure messenger without any user IDs (not even random)
  6 projects | /r/privacy | 28 May 2023

  Here's the URL https://github.com/trailofbits/publications/blob/master/reviews/SimpleXChat.pdf It was in the article I have already linked.

• Solidity digest fortnightly / 17-30 apr 2023
  3 projects | /r/solidity | 30 Apr 2023

  MYSO Finance Security Assesment by Trail of Bits

• Audit Firms Ranking
  3 projects | /r/ethdev | 28 Apr 2023

  Trail of Bits

• Transparency at Skiff
  3 projects | /r/Skiff | 25 Apr 2023

  Hi! I'm Skiff's CEO. We've had 3 security audits, including 2 from Trail of Bits - one of the best security auditing firms in the world https://github.com/trailofbits/publications. Skiff Mail is also open-source: https://github.com/skiff-org/skiff-mail as is our whitepaper https://skiff.com/whitepaper We've also been in the news quite a bit: https://www.theverge.com/2022/5/17/23075804/skiff-mail-email-privacy, https://www.wsj.com/articles/encryption-bans-what-is-this-russia-hacking-online-privacy-security-data-signal-whatsapp-emails-protection-11675436242 (I wrote this with our team!), https://techcrunch.com/2023/01/30/russia-skiff-block/, and more, even though we're only a year old. We collect no personally identifying information - not even IP addresses used - no backup emails, phones, etc. - no advertising, and we end-to-end encrypt BOTH email subject + body and don't have any metadata (time sent/received an exception). What can we do to share more of this with more people? We're a younger company but it's so important this is made public.

• Skiff Apps
  3 projects | /r/PrivacyGuides | 25 Apr 2023

  Hi! I'm Skiff's CEO. We've had 3 security audits, including 2 from Trail of Bits - likely the best security auditing firm in the world https://github.com/trailofbits/publications. Skiff Mail is also open-source: https://github.com/skiff-org/skiff-mail as is our whitepaper https://skiff.com/whitepaper

• DeFi Exchange Uniswap Launches Uniswap Mobile Wallet
  2 projects | /r/CryptoCurrency | 14 Apr 2023

  Our wallet was audited by Trail of Bits and the code is open source https://github.com/trailofbits/publications/blob/master/reviews/UniswapMobileWallet-securityreview.pdf

• Ask HN: How can I get into cyber security research?
  3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 29 Jan 2023

  "Cybersecurity research" is a very large domain, so it's hard to offer a wholly encompassing answer here! The company I work for[1] does a great deal of program analysis research, primarily in and around the LLVM ecosystem. Other companies/groups in our domain(s) include Galois, Inria, and GrammaTech.

  In terms of working in our domain: we frequently find it difficult to hire for pre-existing compilers or program analysis skills (it's a small community!), so we generally long for strong engineers with security/low-level fundamentals who don't mind making a pivot.

  As for how the job is: I personally find it very fulfilling, but it definitely contains a degree of uncertainty (particularly when doing government-funded research) that ordinary SWEs/SREs may not be used to. I've noticed that it takes new hires a decent amount of time to acclimate and become comfortable with the idea of research engineering, meaning engineering where we expect less than 100% of all exploratory avenues to have productive outcomes. This can be a large culture shock compared to typical engineering, where tasking is defined primarily by business requirements that don't contain a large degree of uncertainty or ambiguity in terms of implementation approach.

  [1]: https://www.trailofbits.com/

  3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 29 Jan 2023

  Trail of Bits does this kind of work (https://www.trailofbits.com)!

  Tbh there is a much larger market for application of existing technology (e.g., pentests) than development of new technology (e.g., DARPA programs and the 1% of tech firms that need something new). There are a handful of others, but the market doesn't support dozens of other firms like Trail of Bits. There is some innovation that happens in Series A and B security startups but IMHO that quickly gives way to pressures of building an enterprise sales team.

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