Re:Google Safe Browsing is blocking small Mastodon servers
by sneak on Wednesday November 09, 2022 @04:00AM
(#33528926)
This list needs to be redownloaded multiple times daily by a billion or so devices.
Re:Google Safe Browsing is blocking small Mastodon servers
by kccqzy on Wednesday November 09, 2022 @05:01PM
(#33538577)
A billion is about half an order of magnitude off. The official homepage says five billion.
Re:Google Safe Browsing is blocking small Mastodon servers
by sneak on Wednesday November 09, 2022 @07:12PM
(#33540229)
It's terrifying that a small change at a single URL controlled by a single national government can censor content on five billion machines.
Is there anything else on the entire internet so centralized?
Is it worth all this trouble just to get a Nx space saving?
Because if you just published the 256-bit hashes directly, you could skip the following steps entirely:
> 6. Ask the source of step 1 to give you the full set of hashes corresponding to the prefix from (3) > 7. See if the hash from (2) is in the full hashes you get in (6).
which are the parts that require an actual network call, infrastructure costs, and privacy issues. Speaking of which:
> You can see that at no point does the url being checked go in either direction.
You're not sending the whole URL, but in step (6) you're still telling the source that you're visiting a website belonging to a particular subset of hashes, hashes which the source knows the plaintext of.
I guess the question is exactly how large the set of 'unsafe' urls is. If it's merely in the billions, then (a) truncating the hashes will only get you a roughly ~4x space saving and (b) the 32-bit hashes you send will almost uniquely identify the website you tried to visit. If it's in the trillions, then it makes more sense.