Comment by mike_d
9 hours ago
I have no doubt that that rank and file engineers were not aware of the underlying functionality that allowed for plain text content to be read.
Nobody would ever create a SendPlainTextToZuck() function that had to be called on every message.
It would be as simple as using a built in PRNG for client side key generation and then surreptitiously leaking the initial state (dozens of bytes) once in a nonce signing or something when authenticating with the server.
I’ve often thought one of Zuck’s superpowers is in finding ways to get smart and moral people to do truly evil things. Sometimes it’s mind games. Sometimes it’s careful layers of obfuscation.
Here it might be: This analytics package is dynamically loaded at runtime because reasons. This abuse flagging and review system is bundled with analytics because reasons. This add on for reconfiguring how the analytics package behaves at runtime, and has a bunch of switches nobody remembers why they’re here but don’t touch them they’re fragile.