Any decent error message is a kind of oracle
a day ago
- #Error Messages
- #UX Design
- #Security
- Error messages should be useful, informational, and actionable, not cute or apologetic.
- Bad error messages often result from tradeoffs in design, such as security concerns like preventing account enumeration attacks.
- Error messages can act as oracles, providing attackers with information that can be exploited, as seen in padding oracle attacks.
- Oracles are used in machine learning and other fields to classify and generate new data, highlighting the power of even small bits of information.
- The ease of training AI to solve a task is proportional to how verifiable the task is, emphasizing the importance of defining and measuring success.
- Balancing security and usability in error messages involves tradeoffs, such as adding noise to make attacks harder while ensuring real users can still access their accounts.